I tend to think CO is the prettier more diverse game but like I'm finding in EQ2 grouping is really just not easy. CoH has always been what WoW finally is... super easy to do the whole MMO thing in. It is however repetitive and even the mission arcs and task forces are rehashed zone pieces with some exceptions.
Because of that they both suffer from bite-size-play-session-itis. But for punching a bad guy in the face... really no better choice
Although I enjoyed CoH, it does get boring due to the lame NPC AI - you could wish that the bad guys would at least be running out from their hideouts to terrorize the populace instead of just all over the streets in the open.
However, I couldn't get into CO at all. The vaunted char creation system was an amazing pain in the @ss for me. I must have spent a half hour each in two tries, and I couldn't create a regular sized guy without him having a huge set of manboobs lol. There's no option to reduce the chest size, so apparently all superheroes need to be at least 7 feet tall and 5 wide to accommodate their ponderous pectorals.
When I tried the gameplay, it seemed very staged - hey look, run up to that cop and get a mission! Wow, how immersive and engaging! *facepalm. The comic book coloring was the last straw- I just hate it. I find CoH's old-school, EQ 1.5-era technology to produce far better looking characters, and hey, on my machine, I can turn them all the way up without any slowdown.
So, while CoH is kinda stale now, CO was a disappointment for me, so I'd have to rate CoH as the winner here.
I guess authors write stories to draw discussion in order to make it seem that they have written a good article.
This is not the case. This article lacks much validity as much of what it has to say is inaccurate. Once again an MMORPG.com author that does not truly have a grasp of the subject matter has thrown down the gauntlet of inaccuracy to get their share of attention.
This one is definitely more of a story than a journalistic article.
It should be clear by now that City of Heroes has a very dedicated community of players that will come to defense of their MMORPG (as they have done so once again).
I have not played Champions Online. However, to say it is based on Champions the RPG is a travesty. The signature characters from Champions the RPG are in Champions Online - that is it. The mechanics that make Champions the RPG the great RPG that are NOT part of Champions Online. This included the robust, number-crunching character creation systems and the combat system - which were both EXTREMELY balanced and, since they were completely mathematically based, totally written for conversion into a computer format. From what legends say, Cryptic tossed the Champions the RPG mechanics out the window in order to use the NAME on the mechanics that they had started on for what was to be the Marvel Universe MMORPG. I haven't never seen anyone say that this was not the case.
So let's go through this inaccurate comparison step by step - most notably correcting your errors in regards to City of Heroes.
The article Intro
[quote]For five years City of Heroes dominated the Superhero MMOG world, until its developer,
Cryptic Studios, decided to move on and try something new. [/quote]
Cryptic Studios left not long after City of Villains (Issue 6) which, I believe, was before the game had even reached the three year mark. But the author is right, they did jump ship to work on the Marvel Universe game.
[quote] ,,,and City of Heroes is still going strong having recently released their
[quote]The edge however has to go to Champions Online. [/quote]
I disagree. This is purely opinion and includes facts that are misleading or just plan false.
[quote]Expanding on the action-first motif set
by City of Heroes, players in Champions Online must rely on manual blocking to stave
off attacks from bad guys.[/quote]
So basically, this means that in CoH your characters blocking is based on the ability of your character and in Champions Online it is based on your twitch-reflexes, your computer hardware's performance, and your connection speed.
[quote]And in place of the standard "mana-pool" mechanic, heroes
use Energy Builders to fuel the use of their special powers.[/quote]
Instead of having access to all of your powers like in CoH, you have to use your lower level powers in Champions Online in order to power up BEFORE you can use your higher level attacks. What this means to a City of Heroes player is that your Blaster can't go in and Nuke a group of foes; in Champions Online - apparently - you have to use your basic attacks for a while to build up power to unleash a big attack. Sounds like a downer to me, but to each their own.
[quote] Add in the ability to use
the Xbox 360 controller for bashing heads, and the game takes on a decidedly more
action-oriented feel.[/quote]
I have been using LogiTech game pads to play City of Heroes since Issue 1 aka you could play with a USB game pad since game launch. I started off with a Rumble Pad, but the Dual Stick Action Pads that I have been using for the last 4 years are the same basic design as a PS2 controller. I play about 90% with the game pad - it doesn't have a built in keyboard and neither does the Xbox 360 controllers that I have seen.
[quote]A careful balance of offense and defense is needed, adding
a bit more of strategy to the combat in Champions Online.[/quote]
Seriously, did the author even see someone play City of Heroes? Because it sure doesn't seem like they ever played it. Maybe they were just reading the other articles about City of Heroes in MMORPG.com.
GROUPING
[quote] Originally solo play was not very viable in City of
Heroes, and this led to a very robust and very popular Looking for Group System. [/quote]
I made 22 characters in the first week that I played City of Heroes - back in Issue 1. I made more than one of each archetype. It was easy to play solo with a Scrapper back then - or even a Blaster if you were careful. You could solo with a Tank, but it was very slow. I agree you couldn't solo with Controllers or Defenders. It is by far easier to solo now than it was back then.
Why wasn't it so solo-friendly back then? Well City of Heroes was designed with teaming in mind. It wasn't added after the fact like this seems to imply. The archetypes were built with abilities to augment each other so that players would learn to play as part of a team. It's a stealth learning thing, but I'm sure that just goes over some people's heads. So yes, City of Heroes was built for teaming, but even the original game book pointed out which archetypes to play if you wanted to solo.
[quote]Over the years since its release, City of Heroes has become far more solo-friendly,
but the community's love of grouping and the focus on team mechanics has remained,
perhaps fostered by the instanced and scalable nature of the game's missions.[/quote]
The team mechanics haven't changed. The teaming mechanics haven't really changed much either. The only real change was the SuperSide-Kicking system which is an improved version of the old side-kick system which was released when the game was. The only main mechanic of teaming to change was allowing the leader to "pass the star" aka to promote another team member to the role of team leader which happened in Issue 2.
[quote]Champions Online on the other hand was designed from the ground up to allow players to
solo or group depending on their mood. Add to this the less-instanced nature of the game,
and you have an environment that's very difficult to group in, and much more akin to
World of Warcraft. Keep in mind, I am not claiming that grouping or solo-ing is
the better way to play, but if it's a game with an emphasis on team play you're
looking for, City of Heroes is likely more up to snuff.[/quote]
From the boards on the City of Heroes side, Champions Online has a very bad teaming mechanic. In fact, the word is that it is better not to team at all because the mechanics for teaming are just that bad. So yeah, teaming is great in City of Heroes - so come join us and be part of a great superhero team!
If you play normal City of Heroes content aka the original mission arcs, there are plenty of run around and Arrest # of X in the streets missions - these are not instanced missions. City of Heroes players, in fact, tend to balk at Arrest # of X missions, but that doesn't stop us from fighting villains or enemies in the streets of Paragon City if we want to and we do quite often do so - especially during Rikti Raids, Zombie Apocalypse attacks, or Spiritual disturbances of one form or another - not to mention Giant Monsters roaming around, arsonists setting buildings on fire, etc. etc. etc.
MISSIONS
[quote] The big focus of gameplay in City of Heroes is its instanced mission system.
They scale to party-size, the difficulty can be set by the party leader, and they
offer players a private way to fight crime away from griefers.[/quote]
In City of Heroes, the team leader does not set the mission difficulty, the mission holder does.
There are no griefers in City of Heroes. Players that try to do what little griefing that can be done in City of Heroes quickly find their accounts banned. The instance missions aren't to reduce griefing, they are to reduce game lag.
Seriously? They allow griefing in Champions Online? That is what this seems to imply.
[quote]The downside is that
the random nature of these missions makes them very repetitive in terms of layout
and looks. If you've seen one set of underground caves, you've seen them all. [/quote]
In City of Heroes, there are three kinds of cave missions; purple caves, villain caves, and Council Caves. There are several variants of Purple and Villain caves for police/newspaper missions. The normal mission arcs have several unique cave maps.
So no, it is not true that if you have seen one cave that you have seen them all. I will, however, say that I am not a big fan of cave maps in general - especially purple caves.
[quote]Champions Online takes the majority of the missions back into the open world, and
instead uses instances to focus on storylines and group-content. [/quote]
I found this interesting because of the previous statement of how the instance missions in Champions Online were made to be too crowded for teaming - at least that is the way that I read that section.
Seriously, if you wanted to stay outside and fight in City of Heroes you can easily do just that. When I make new characters in City of Heroes, I generally play solo and fight in the streets until somewhere between level 5 and level 10.
CRAFTING AND ECONOMY
[quote]When City of Heroes launched, there was no gear, no crafting, and no real reason
for heroes to have a bank account.[/quote]
Back in the day, we still had influence and there WERE enhancements to buy. In fact before the Market and Crafting were added to the game, I had several characters that did NOT have enough influence to be able to fill their enhancement slots with the preferable slots for their level by the time they were over level 30.
[quote]It turns out that players really missed this
layer to the game, and in due time Cryptic added a crafting system and an auction
house to the game. [/quote]
Well, you know, Cryptic left not long after City of Villains (aka Issue 6) was released.
The Market and Crafting weren't release until Issue 9; Cryptic was already gone by this point.
[quote]Learning from their past mistakes, Champions Online launched
with both crafting and auctions in the game. Missing from Champions Online however,
though it was only added after launch to City of Heroes, is a guild (or Supergroup)
housing system. The developers have marked this feature down as something they'd
like to do in the future, but that doesn't change the fact that migrants from
Liberty City might miss their old super-hangouts.[/quote]
Yeah, bases were added to City of Heroes back in Issue 6 when City of Villains was released. We are on issue 16 now.
Looks like Champions Online still doesn't have bases. Huh. And Cryptic said have it down on their list of things that they might do. Interesting.
Liberty City? Okay, did this author even read the Game Informer articles on City of Heroes before writing this article?
CHARACTER CREATION
[quote]Quite possibly the most revered standard set by City of Heroes was its in depth
character creation system. ... Though the costume options are less than what's available in its
five year-old cousin, Champions Online allows far more diversity in terms of
everything from the size of a hero's ears and hands to the way they stand and move.[/quote]
I'll give it to Champion Online. Being able to change my ear and hand size was always important to me in character design - yeah, right. In City of Heroes, I can pick different ears and I can modify the side of my characters hands by the type of gloves that they wear. No, I can't make tiny hands or elephant ears in City of Heroes - but nor would I want to.
The way that characters stand and move in City of Heroes is affected by the powers you take and the emotes that you use.
[quote]I'd like to see someone create a demon-clown-wolf-robot in City of Heroes. [/quote]
Beast head - Wolf
Chest - Jester - clown colors
Arms - robotic
Shoulder parts - Horns
Lower body - Beast Legs
Done. Wow. That was really hard. The author's lack of knowledge of City of Heroes is quite astonishing. Seriously. The author appears to be fairly clues of the basic information that can be found on the City of Heroes website and with very little research. Truth in journalism seems to be a forgotten trade these days in general, but still - even so..come on!
[quote]Add in the classless power system that Champions Online has in place, allowing
for a remarkable number of combinations of superpowers, and I dare say
Champions Online wins in this department.[/quote]
City of Heroes has a remarkable number of combination of super powers. You also get 12 character slots on 11 servers giving you a base number of 132 characters. You can add more character slots to server for up to 36 characters per server.
From what I hear you have 8 character slots on Champions Online.
8 characters versus 132 characters per account. Sounds like City of Heroes wins to me. But then again, I have 139 City of Heroes characters at this point, and I don't have to rebuilt a character from ground up to enjoy a different set of powers. I would definitely say that that is a plus.
CONTENT
[quote] This is a topic that is kind of unfair to draw comparisons on. [/quote]
Then why did the author bring it up?
[quote]City of Heroes
has the advantage of five post-launch years of development. They have the advantage
of the Mission Architect system that allows players to create new missions from
scratch. There are two full games worth of content if a player owns both the Hero
and Villain side of things.[/quote]
There is only City of Heroes now. City of Villains is part of City of Heroes. Buy a copy of either and you can play both.
[quote]This doesn't change the fact that Champions Online
has the edge in terms of less repetitive quest content, more diverse locales to
adventure in, and the added boon of the Nemesis System which allows players to
create their own archenemy and face them throughout the life of their character.[/quote]
I would like to see an actual mission count on this because I don't think this is the case. Outside of the normal mission content in City of Heroes (which includes City of Villains, in case you missed that before) which was designed as unique content for 5 different character origins (on the hero side), there are over 200,000 player created missions. Some of those are like DEV content, but I'm sure there are well over 10 thousand that are nothing like the DEVs created other than the map sets that are used for the missions.
More diverse? I doubt that as well. Get some number going to prove it. City of Heroes has far more zones than Champions Online - and, no, the city zones are not the same - they each have different flavors of architecture and lay-out. No outer space in City of Heroes - you'll just have to settle for the Steve Ditko-esque Shadow Shard.
City of Heroes has far more content than Champions Online. Good luck catching up, Cryptic.
PVP
[quote]City of Heroes added in a fairly successful PvP system when City of Villains launched. [/quote]
City of Villains was issue 6. PvP in City of Heroes started with the Arena in Issue 4.
[quote]... but only Champions allows players to
become zombies and kill zombies while fighting each other...[/quote]
I thought that was only during Champions Online's Holloween event? I could be wrong, but at least I'm admitting that I may not know what I'm talking about.
In City of Heroes, you can't get bit by zombie and become a zombie, but you can create a zombie character and you certainly can create a zombie mastermind on the villains side (without needing to find a zombie to bite you) and order your zombie minions to attack your foes. I should know, I have several zombie masterminds ....oh, did I forget to say that City of Heroes comes with access to 11 server and 12 character slots per server where-as Champion Online apparently only has 8 character slots total ...hey, that's like 4 character slots less than one servers worth on CoH!
CONCLUSION
[quote]A lot of players once dismissed Champions Online as the unofficial sequel
to City of Heroes. But such a comparison is similar to calling Warhammer
Online a sequel to Dark Age of Camelot. Surely both games are created by
the same development studio, and indeed they share a lot of similarities,
but when playing each it's not hard to find the differences in controls,
content, and general feel of the two games.[/quote]
Let's see.
City of Heroes is what it still is - a great superhero MMORPG in it's down unique universe.
Champions Online was going to be Marvel Universe Online, but it fell through, and then it became a game based on Champions the RPG - but all the game mechanics that made Champions the RPG great were thrown out ...and the Signature characters of Champions Online were kept. Yeah, those signature characters that we always thought were created as jokes as now not to make Champions the RPG characters - seriously, Foxbat had all his powers in a pistol that could easily be snatched away from him!
So how exactly is Champions Online a sequel to City of Heroes?
[quote]The biggest disparities lie
in the breadth of the game world, the mission content, the combat, and
the player-created content. [/quote]
City of Heroes has more zones than Champions Online.
There are more mission in City of Heroes than there are in Champions Online.
Sure, there are even differences in combat in City of Heroes between PvE and PvP.
Yeah, you are right about that - Champions Online as NO player created content other than the characters themselves.
[quote]Depending on a player's taste, each game offers
something unique to the superhero MMOG. [quote]
If you are interested in a superhero game with a helpful and friendly community of players that love the game, do yourself a favor and check out City of Heroes - at least check out the free trial (see the City of Heroes website for details).
[quote]The only question in my mind after
extensive time with both is what will DC Universe Online bring to the table
to make itself stand out, or will its more familiar intellectual property be
more than enough?[/quote]
Seriously?
What percentage of games based on DC comics were/are any good?
DC Universe will only be competition for City of Heroes in the long run if it has decent content. It may distract CoH players for a while, but there are quite a number of players that leave only to come back to Paragon City decrying how bad their experience was elsewhere - and that includes Champions Online!
City of Heroes was never very fun for me, although I played it for two years with some friends. The combat in CoH was unbearably slow, basically I was addicted to speed boost to even accept the game as playable. The endless grind against foes was also pretty boring for me, as were the same few instanced maps. From a superhero point of view, I felt more like I was making the "Tankers" and "Healers" that the developers had per-destined me to play, not anything that reminded me of comic book superheroes, and no real creativity or freedom once the powertrees had been chosen at level 1.
Champions Online addressed all of these problems for me. The combat is the most rapid and responsive that I have seen in an MMO, it reminds me of an action RPG like Diablo. Instead of grinding through foes for XP, the balance is shifted towards doing content, and instead of every mission being in the same warehouse/sewers/factory bleh instanced maps, there are over a 1000 missions in CO that take place in the open world zones. Now I feel like I am creating superheroes and not just following a pre-destined track towards making a fossilized fantasy game archetype. Since when would superman do less damage just because he is invulnerable? You can argue about balancing a classless system, but its pretty hard to argue that those ancient fantasy classes do a good job of capturing the superhero genre.
CO has more rapid combat, and the strikes are solid, not like CoH (when my friends first dragged me into CoH I thought the combat looked like drunk guys exaggerating pro-wrestling techniques. CO does not repeat the same few instanced maps hundreds of times each. CO does not force you to play a "tank" or a "healer", you have much much more creative freedom.
When I first found out that CoH was coming out... I was thrilled about it, but my hope dimmed quickly when it took up a p2p model, and at the time of its release, this was not an option to me.
So a few years later, when CoH released its trial, I tried it out for a week and gave up.
Then I bought CO when it came out, just from watching one youtube video of it. OH lord, what a huge mistake I had made.
CO definently improves on the graphical side, and the comic-esque graphic made me happy (inside and outside :O), but the game fails to deliver when the game itself does not 'play' like a super-hero game. It felt like I was playing the same MMO I had played before...and not to mention, when you level up the highest amount of skills you can carry around is subpar to that of many MMOs, and many of them are weak or useless- thus cornering you to create 'fotm' templates if you want to progress through the game without much deaths from mobs (and making you unable to really create a 'themed' superhero without severely gimping yourself)
OK, limited skill, GW does that too, right? BLEH, at least in GW you can change your skills around as much as you want... it gets bland and boring in CO after you find 2-3 skills that you'll spam until the heaven splits and the apocalypse comes.
CO is not a superhero game.
CoH has a much slower combat, less emphasis on fast-paced action, but I had more fun playing trial in CoH then I did a month of CO... The first time i grouped with a bunch of random players and went into that sewer was more fun than CO's bland quests... It was more rewarding upgrading my character in CoH then it was picking another stupid poorly described shitty skill in CO.
Great article, really enjoyed the read. I'm hoping DCUO brings something new to the table as well, or perhaps just takes whats good about both games and puts them into one game.
I guess authors write stories to draw discussion in order to make it seem that they have written a good article. This is not the case. This article lacks much validity as much of what it has to say is inaccurate. Once again an MMORPG.com author that does not truly have a grasp of the subject matter has thrown down the gauntlet of inaccuracy to get their share of attention. This one is definitely more of a story than a journalistic article. It should be clear by now that City of Heroes has a very dedicated community of players that will come to defense of their MMORPG (as they have done so once again). I have not played Champions Online. However, to say it is based on Champions the RPG is a travesty. The signature characters from Champions the RPG are in Champions Online - that is it. The mechanics that make Champions the RPG the great RPG that are NOT part of Champions Online. This included the robust, number-crunching character creation systems and the combat system - which were both EXTREMELY balanced and, since they were completely mathematically based, totally written for conversion into a computer format. From what legends say, Cryptic tossed the Champions the RPG mechanics out the window in order to use the NAME on the mechanics that they had started on for what was to be the Marvel Universe MMORPG. I haven't never seen anyone say that this was not the case. So let's go through this inaccurate comparison step by step - most notably correcting your errors in regards to City of Heroes. The article Intro [quote]For five years City of Heroes dominated the Superhero MMOG world, until its developer,
Cryptic Studios, decided to move on and try something new. [/quote] Cryptic Studios left not long after City of Villains (Issue 6) which, I believe, was before the game had even reached the three year mark. But the author is right, they did jump ship to work on the Marvel Universe game. [quote] ,,,and City of Heroes is still going strong having recently released their
16th major content update. [/quote] The CoH Devs are currently working on an expansion to CoH called City of Heroes :: Going Rogue www.cityofheroes.com/goingrogue/en/ COMBAT [quote]The edge however has to go to Champions Online. [/quote] I disagree. This is purely opinion and includes facts that are misleading or just plan false. [quote]Expanding on the action-first motif set
by City of Heroes, players in Champions Online must rely on manual blocking to stave
off attacks from bad guys.[/quote] So basically, this means that in CoH your characters blocking is based on the ability of your character and in Champions Online it is based on your twitch-reflexes, your computer hardware's performance, and your connection speed. [quote]And in place of the standard "mana-pool" mechanic, heroes
use Energy Builders to fuel the use of their special powers.[/quote] Instead of having access to all of your powers like in CoH, you have to use your lower level powers in Champions Online in order to power up BEFORE you can use your higher level attacks. What this means to a City of Heroes player is that your Blaster can't go in and Nuke a group of foes; in Champions Online - apparently - you have to use your basic attacks for a while to build up power to unleash a big attack. Sounds like a downer to me, but to each their own. [quote] Add in the ability to use
the Xbox 360 controller for bashing heads, and the game takes on a decidedly more
action-oriented feel.[/quote] I have been using LogiTech game pads to play City of Heroes since Issue 1 aka you could play with a USB game pad since game launch. I started off with a Rumble Pad, but the Dual Stick Action Pads that I have been using for the last 4 years are the same basic design as a PS2 controller. I play about 90% with the game pad - it doesn't have a built in keyboard and neither does the Xbox 360 controllers that I have seen. [quote]A careful balance of offense and defense is needed, adding
a bit more of strategy to the combat in Champions Online.[/quote] Seriously, did the author even see someone play City of Heroes? Because it sure doesn't seem like they ever played it. Maybe they were just reading the other articles about City of Heroes in MMORPG.com.
GROUPING [quote] Originally solo play was not very viable in City of
Heroes, and this led to a very robust and very popular Looking for Group System. [/quote] I made 22 characters in the first week that I played City of Heroes - back in Issue 1. I made more than one of each archetype. It was easy to play solo with a Scrapper back then - or even a Blaster if you were careful. You could solo with a Tank, but it was very slow. I agree you couldn't solo with Controllers or Defenders. It is by far easier to solo now than it was back then. Why wasn't it so solo-friendly back then? Well City of Heroes was designed with teaming in mind. It wasn't added after the fact like this seems to imply. The archetypes were built with abilities to augment each other so that players would learn to play as part of a team. It's a stealth learning thing, but I'm sure that just goes over some people's heads. So yes, City of Heroes was built for teaming, but even the original game book pointed out which archetypes to play if you wanted to solo. [quote]Over the years since its release, City of Heroes has become far more solo-friendly,
but the community's love of grouping and the focus on team mechanics has remained,
perhaps fostered by the instanced and scalable nature of the game's missions.[/quote] The team mechanics haven't changed. The teaming mechanics haven't really changed much either. The only real change was the SuperSide-Kicking system which is an improved version of the old side-kick system which was released when the game was. The only main mechanic of teaming to change was allowing the leader to "pass the star" aka to promote another team member to the role of team leader which happened in Issue 2. [quote]Champions Online on the other hand was designed from the ground up to allow players to
solo or group depending on their mood. Add to this the less-instanced nature of the game,
and you have an environment that's very difficult to group in, and much more akin to
World of Warcraft. Keep in mind, I am not claiming that grouping or solo-ing is
the better way to play, but if it's a game with an emphasis on team play you're
looking for, City of Heroes is likely more up to snuff.[/quote] From the boards on the City of Heroes side, Champions Online has a very bad teaming mechanic. In fact, the word is that it is better not to team at all because the mechanics for teaming are just that bad. So yeah, teaming is great in City of Heroes - so come join us and be part of a great superhero team! If you play normal City of Heroes content aka the original mission arcs, there are plenty of run around and Arrest # of X in the streets missions - these are not instanced missions. City of Heroes players, in fact, tend to balk at Arrest # of X missions, but that doesn't stop us from fighting villains or enemies in the streets of Paragon City if we want to and we do quite often do so - especially during Rikti Raids, Zombie Apocalypse attacks, or Spiritual disturbances of one form or another - not to mention Giant Monsters roaming around, arsonists setting buildings on fire, etc. etc. etc. MISSIONS [quote] The big focus of gameplay in City of Heroes is its instanced mission system.
They scale to party-size, the difficulty can be set by the party leader, and they
offer players a private way to fight crime away from griefers.[/quote] In City of Heroes, the team leader does not set the mission difficulty, the mission holder does. There are no griefers in City of Heroes. Players that try to do what little griefing that can be done in City of Heroes quickly find their accounts banned. The instance missions aren't to reduce griefing, they are to reduce game lag. Seriously? They allow griefing in Champions Online? That is what this seems to imply. [quote]The downside is that
the random nature of these missions makes them very repetitive in terms of layout
and looks. If you've seen one set of underground caves, you've seen them all. [/quote] In City of Heroes, there are three kinds of cave missions; purple caves, villain caves, and Council Caves. There are several variants of Purple and Villain caves for police/newspaper missions. The normal mission arcs have several unique cave maps. So no, it is not true that if you have seen one cave that you have seen them all. I will, however, say that I am not a big fan of cave maps in general - especially purple caves.
[quote]Champions Online takes the majority of the missions back into the open world, and
instead uses instances to focus on storylines and group-content. [/quote] I found this interesting because of the previous statement of how the instance missions in Champions Online were made to be too crowded for teaming - at least that is the way that I read that section. Seriously, if you wanted to stay outside and fight in City of Heroes you can easily do just that. When I make new characters in City of Heroes, I generally play solo and fight in the streets until somewhere between level 5 and level 10. CRAFTING AND ECONOMY [quote]When City of Heroes launched, there was no gear, no crafting, and no real reason
for heroes to have a bank account.[/quote] Back in the day, we still had influence and there WERE enhancements to buy. In fact before the Market and Crafting were added to the game, I had several characters that did NOT have enough influence to be able to fill their enhancement slots with the preferable slots for their level by the time they were over level 30. [quote]It turns out that players really missed this
layer to the game, and in due time Cryptic added a crafting system and an auction
house to the game. [/quote] Well, you know, Cryptic left not long after City of Villains (aka Issue 6) was released. The Market and Crafting weren't release until Issue 9; Cryptic was already gone by this point. [quote]Learning from their past mistakes, Champions Online launched
with both crafting and auctions in the game. Missing from Champions Online however,
though it was only added after launch to City of Heroes, is a guild (or Supergroup)
housing system. The developers have marked this feature down as something they'd
like to do in the future, but that doesn't change the fact that migrants from
Liberty City might miss their old super-hangouts.[/quote] Yeah, bases were added to City of Heroes back in Issue 6 when City of Villains was released. We are on issue 16 now. Looks like Champions Online still doesn't have bases. Huh. And Cryptic said have it down on their list of things that they might do. Interesting. Liberty City? Okay, did this author even read the Game Informer articles on City of Heroes before writing this article? CHARACTER CREATION [quote]Quite possibly the most revered standard set by City of Heroes was its in depth
character creation system. ... Though the costume options are less than what's available in its
five year-old cousin, Champions Online allows far more diversity in terms of
everything from the size of a hero's ears and hands to the way they stand and move.[/quote] I'll give it to Champion Online. Being able to change my ear and hand size was always important to me in character design - yeah, right. In City of Heroes, I can pick different ears and I can modify the side of my characters hands by the type of gloves that they wear. No, I can't make tiny hands or elephant ears in City of Heroes - but nor would I want to. The way that characters stand and move in City of Heroes is affected by the powers you take and the emotes that you use. [quote]I'd like to see someone create a demon-clown-wolf-robot in City of Heroes. [/quote] Beast head - Wolf Chest - Jester - clown colors Arms - robotic Shoulder parts - Horns Lower body - Beast Legs Done. Wow. That was really hard. The author's lack of knowledge of City of Heroes is quite astonishing. Seriously. The author appears to be fairly clues of the basic information that can be found on the City of Heroes website and with very little research. Truth in journalism seems to be a forgotten trade these days in general, but still - even so..come on! [quote]Add in the classless power system that Champions Online has in place, allowing
for a remarkable number of combinations of superpowers, and I dare say
Champions Online wins in this department.[/quote] City of Heroes has a remarkable number of combination of super powers. You also get 12 character slots on 11 servers giving you a base number of 132 characters. You can add more character slots to server for up to 36 characters per server. From what I hear you have 8 character slots on Champions Online. 8 characters versus 132 characters per account. Sounds like City of Heroes wins to me. But then again, I have 139 City of Heroes characters at this point, and I don't have to rebuilt a character from ground up to enjoy a different set of powers. I would definitely say that that is a plus. CONTENT [quote] This is a topic that is kind of unfair to draw comparisons on. [/quote] Then why did the author bring it up? [quote]City of Heroes
has the advantage of five post-launch years of development. They have the advantage
of the Mission Architect system that allows players to create new missions from
scratch. There are two full games worth of content if a player owns both the Hero
and Villain side of things.[/quote] There is only City of Heroes now. City of Villains is part of City of Heroes. Buy a copy of either and you can play both. [quote]This doesn't change the fact that Champions Online
has the edge in terms of less repetitive quest content, more diverse locales to
adventure in, and the added boon of the Nemesis System which allows players to
create their own archenemy and face them throughout the life of their character.[/quote] I would like to see an actual mission count on this because I don't think this is the case. Outside of the normal mission content in City of Heroes (which includes City of Villains, in case you missed that before) which was designed as unique content for 5 different character origins (on the hero side), there are over 200,000 player created missions. Some of those are like DEV content, but I'm sure there are well over 10 thousand that are nothing like the DEVs created other than the map sets that are used for the missions. More diverse? I doubt that as well. Get some number going to prove it. City of Heroes has far more zones than Champions Online - and, no, the city zones are not the same - they each have different flavors of architecture and lay-out. No outer space in City of Heroes - you'll just have to settle for the Steve Ditko-esque Shadow Shard. City of Heroes has far more content than Champions Online. Good luck catching up, Cryptic. PVP [quote]City of Heroes added in a fairly successful PvP system when City of Villains launched. [/quote] City of Villains was issue 6. PvP in City of Heroes started with the Arena in Issue 4.
[quote]... but only Champions allows players to
become zombies and kill zombies while fighting each other...[/quote] I thought that was only during Champions Online's Holloween event? I could be wrong, but at least I'm admitting that I may not know what I'm talking about. In City of Heroes, you can't get bit by zombie and become a zombie, but you can create a zombie character and you certainly can create a zombie mastermind on the villains side (without needing to find a zombie to bite you) and order your zombie minions to attack your foes. I should know, I have several zombie masterminds ....oh, did I forget to say that City of Heroes comes with access to 11 server and 12 character slots per server where-as Champion Online apparently only has 8 character slots total ...hey, that's like 4 character slots less than one servers worth on CoH! CONCLUSION [quote]A lot of players once dismissed Champions Online as the unofficial sequel
to City of Heroes. But such a comparison is similar to calling Warhammer
Online a sequel to Dark Age of Camelot. Surely both games are created by
the same development studio, and indeed they share a lot of similarities,
but when playing each it's not hard to find the differences in controls,
content, and general feel of the two games.[/quote] Let's see. City of Heroes is what it still is - a great superhero MMORPG in it's down unique universe. Champions Online was going to be Marvel Universe Online, but it fell through, and then it became a game based on Champions the RPG - but all the game mechanics that made Champions the RPG great were thrown out ...and the Signature characters of Champions Online were kept. Yeah, those signature characters that we always thought were created as jokes as now not to make Champions the RPG characters - seriously, Foxbat had all his powers in a pistol that could easily be snatched away from him! So how exactly is Champions Online a sequel to City of Heroes? [quote]The biggest disparities lie
in the breadth of the game world, the mission content, the combat, and
the player-created content. [/quote] City of Heroes has more zones than Champions Online. There are more mission in City of Heroes than there are in Champions Online. Sure, there are even differences in combat in City of Heroes between PvE and PvP. Yeah, you are right about that - Champions Online as NO player created content other than the characters themselves. [quote]Depending on a player's taste, each game offers
something unique to the superhero MMOG. [quote] If you are interested in a superhero game with a helpful and friendly community of players that love the game, do yourself a favor and check out City of Heroes - at least check out the free trial (see the City of Heroes website for details). [quote]The only question in my mind after
extensive time with both is what will DC Universe Online bring to the table
to make itself stand out, or will its more familiar intellectual property be
more than enough?[/quote] Seriously? What percentage of games based on DC comics were/are any good? DC Universe will only be competition for City of Heroes in the long run if it has decent content. It may distract CoH players for a while, but there are quite a number of players that leave only to come back to Paragon City decrying how bad their experience was elsewhere - and that includes Champions Online! Long live City of Heroes!
This is a good post.
Seriously, this article has so many inaccuracies where it concerns City of heroes/Villains that everyone should be scratching their heads and wondering if the author ever played that game.
Some things that I noticed: the author wasn't at all aware that City of Heroes and City of Villains effectively merged. If you owned the box for one, you own both games. NCSoft did this when they first acquired CoH/V from Cryptic to much fanfare. Paragon Studios now considers them a single game.
The author failed to mention the new CoH/V expansion "Going Rogue," which will feature side switching, further blurring the lines between villains and heroes. It will feature a new "city" and essentially a new faction. Here's a link to the Going Rogue website by the way: www.cityofheroes.com/goingrogue/en/
The author also didn't seem to realize that one can get missions out-doors in non-instanced areas, they are the minority, but they are common enough that they are called "street sweeping mission" by the community. Imagine that! They are so common they have their own unique nomenclature!
I also liked the summary given that blocking in CoH is based on the characters skills and abilities while blocking in CO depends on the players abilities in twitch based gameplay. That seems like a salient point that should have been included in some sort of "comparison" article...
Others have also mentioned that outdoor, non-instanced missions lead to spawn camping, kill stealing, and other unpleasantness while instanced missions mean no kill stealing, no spawn camping, less lag, and other benefits. Hmmm... Seems that a so-called "comparison" article should mention stuff like this...
Anyway, it's fairly obvious that the author of this article has very little knowledge and experience with City of Heroes/Villains. I mean calling the city in CoH "Liberty City" is a big blunder that anyone who's played the game for more than 20 minutes would never make. The author likes Champions Online, dislikes City of Heroes, and decided to write a puff piece bashing one and praising the other. The cynic in me wants to ask "How much did Cryptic pay you to write this little article?"
I very much hope that the editors of MMORPG.com withdraw this travesty of an article and get someone who has actually played CoH and knows what they are talking about to write a new one. I could do a far better job, but I haven't played Champions Online yet.
The control mechanisms in Champions online were designed for the console and have numerous flaws when played using keyboard and mouse. I reported the specific bugs many times, including one where the hotkey buttons are not mouse clickable while moving. That's terrible, I only use the controller, so I didn't know. The controller support, however, is much better than other MMOs, this was a primary selling point for me. If I wanted to play a console game, I would buy a console. I game on a PC. I wanted to play an MMO on the PC using a controller because I find keyboard/mouse to be painful after long sessions of use. I switched back to CoH. The keyboard controls and GUI are much smoother and far less buggy. I believe you, thanks for the feedback on how to improve CO.
8 characters versus 132 characters per account. Sounds like City of Heroes wins to me.
CoH loses badly in this area. When I played CoH I quickly filled all my slots on the liberty server, and since all my friends were on the liberty server, there was no way for me to ever make more than 8 characters in that game to play with my friends. In contrast, I already have 22 characters in Champions Online, and all of my characters can play with all of my friends characters, no artificial server boundaries exist to separate us. 22 characters without leaving my friends behind, is much more valuable then 8 characters with my friends and 124 character somewhere else.
So then you haven't played in a while have you? They actually give out slots now as veteran rewards. I don't understand though how you are unable to play with your friends on the servers. If you are making that many different characters to play with the same people then what kind of play style do you have? I have still 4 slots open on the server I use most Freedom and I can play with all my friends.
"You think this "A" stands for France?" Captain America
To be fair, I must state I've not played Champions online. Nor will I. There's nothing in this article that remotely encourages me to switch. I'm plenty satisfied with CoX's character creation, and have never felt it didn't have enough options, particularly in light of recently added customization with regard to colors. Soloability? As a devout soloer, it's hard to imagine a more solo-friendly game than CoX. There are, perhaps, 20 quests in the entire game that can't be soloed? And not a one of them offers you loot (other than a badge) that you can't get elsewhere, something ALL MMOs need to learn to do. Repetitiveness? CoH certainly has it, as do most MMOs. From what I've read though, CO has very limited quest options at low levels. Blocking in combat. That might be your cup of tea, but I don't think it's appropriate for all superheroes. If you're playing a Captain America type, that shield is sure handy. But how often do you see a Hulk-type hero blocking? They are there for DAMAGE! Call it fanboyism if you want, but CoH is simply the best MMO I've ever played because it offers me exactly the type of MMO I want: fast, fun combat (I oh so love knocking villains 30 feet across the street or down some stairs), and NO forced grouping is ever required to obtain the best loot in the game.
I played both and I feel that CoH is by far the better game.
The reviewer tried to imply that combat requires more strategy in Champions, which isn't the case. You spam whatever power builder you have to then get off a bigger attack, repeat. That's pretty much it.
CoH is far more solo-friendly with the way you can adjust the difficulty settings on viritually ANY mission.
I would say Champions is more geared towards a button-mashing Xbox 360 game than a PC mmo.
As usual, the line is blurred between these two games. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Champions has its more open worlds, its crazy customization options, and a plethora of different powers then CoX. CoX has the development time, the user created content, and more varied content.
In all honesty, they're both cryptic games... and there are too many similarities for me to pick a clear winner. The faster paced combat just feels better for me in CO, but the severe lack of power variations at max level kills the need for so many varied powersets. The slower button click combat of CoX is fun for a little while, but in the end you're stuck in a framework so in the end you've got to reroll and play through the boring content just to experience any of the other sets.
I've played through both games to max level and then some, and honestly, the Super Hero niche can still use tremendous improvement. Lets think about this... the only 2 superhero games that have been created have been from cryptic.. and cryptic. I think its safe ti say we've seen the best they can offer us. I'm not surprised by the lack of innovation on failed mechanics of champions the second time around after seeing how quick and stale the combat of the CoX games got after a few months around the block. The only longetivity is for those that can't let go of the customization given in each game because one things for sure... the combat and content leave way too much to be desired in both games.... I'm interested to see how DCUO turns out... the first non cryptic superhero MMO..... definitely worth a shot.. even if it is SOE.
Wow... there's some serious angst going on in here. The wall of text detailing the many 'inaccuracies' was ironic in the fact that he introduced plenty on the CO side of things. So while accusing the author on not doing his research, he basically did the same thing.
However, I would say that the author of the article liked CO better than CoX. That's fine, it's his opinion. The refutations to the points made are serious nit picks. I have over 36 months in two accounts and over 24 in a third account for CoX. I have a pretty good handle on that game and while he glossed some things over, it wasn't that bad.
Regardless here's my take:
Character Design: Hands down CO
The classes in CoH are a huge limitation to me. It's nice not having to hear the arguments on "Defenders shouldn't do much damage, they are a support class". Great, I want to play a hero who's essentially a scrapper's sidekick... It's very nice to have every character you make be effective in taking down villains. If I need more damage on a toon, I choose another attack power. If I want to focus on team support more, I grab those powers. It's very liberating.
Costume Creator: Push
CO has more fiddly options, but CoX has more overall options. It's also not really fair to compare a new graphics engine to an older one. I do find that it's easier to get a more distinctive hero in CoX, but I do miss some of the newer controls.
Graphics: Slight advantage to CO
While I like the cell shading, you can turn it off if you don't like it. The zones are huge and it's really cool to look over an entire city. The animations are about the same, which was sad, I expected better from CO on this, and CO is missing a lot of emotes which as a RPer I do miss. I think powers tend to be a little more flashy in CoX. However, the zone design in CO is very good and the models are awesome. CoX still has me feeling like I am running in a city of boxes far too often. The Villain areas are much better, but too many of the zones could use a real makeover.
Combat: Push
I do like the frenetic feel to CO's combat and the block mechanism is quite good. However, CoX has a wider variety of powers that I miss from CO. It's higher tier powers also seem to have more ooomph which is what you want after leveling up a toon. Since they have classes, they can tailor encounters to specific power sets to require teaming. It is nice though to be able to grab any 5-6 toons and do missions. If I never hear LF Healer, or LF tank, it will be too soon.
Content: Push
The content that CO has in it is usually better than much of what you get in CoH. It's a newer engine and they have some very cool tricks in what they can do. The nemesis system is quite good and has a lot of potential to be amazing. However, CO is very limited in terms of what it has. You find yourself doing the same missions over and over with the different characters, which is a real drag. So for quality, they did well, for quantity they really missed the boat.
I'm not terribly fond of the enemy groups in either of them... if I had to choose I'd likely take the CoH opponents and go with the CO backstory. CoH's zone wide events are better, but they don't have public quests. CO is also missing 'things to do', which CoH has in abundance. Of course a couple of years might change that. Still for now, even if on a mission for mission basis, I like the CO missions, there just aren't enough of them to keep you excited about their quality.
Guild Support: CoH by far
CO has no real reason to join a SG other than a character slot. The game is incredibly solo friendly (which can be a plus or minus depending on who you are) so you don't need your SG mates for 95% of the game. There is no base features, or other real bonuses except for some storage for SG's in CO. CoH has bases, SG missions, reasons to team, etc. It's not even a contest.
UI: CoH
This likely has to do with the maturity of the engine, but I think they have done an excellent job with the UI. CO's isn't bad, but it needs some work to really feel polished.
PvP: Neither
I thought about this one for a long time. A few issues ago, PvP in CoH was fun, but very difficult to actually get a toon to be competitive. That was a huge flaw. Now it's easy to get into and kind of lame. COs PvP suffers from the build of the month to a degree that makes CoH's build issues laughable. Since anyone can take any power, the powers that are OPed get taken in every serious PvP build. I like COs games for PvP a bit more, but neither of them really excels in this area. CO is missing villians in a big way!
Developers: CoH
While I have no real problem with COs staff, the folks in Paragon Studios have done some amazing work recently. We'll see what they come up with on Going Rogue which should be very interesting. COs dev's do listen, but there is a perception that the company is more focused on STO. Not sure whether it's true or not, but it would be hard to match the work that the CoH devs have put in over the past couple years.
Architecture: CO
Being able to play with anyone in the game is wonderful ('one server world'). Being able to choose whatever you want for a hero name is a godsend. Those are features I would love to see in far more games.
Overall: Push
I'm currently playing CO, and have dropped my sub to CoX. However, that's not because I don't like CoX. Like I said, I have over 8 paid years of accounts. I just felt like I had done most of the content and will likely re-up when the expansion comes out. While I've enjoyed my time with CO, I do find that I limit my play times as I've already seen most of what it has to offer. CoH has maturity on it's side and it shows, but CO has some newer/cooler features. Bottom line is that if CO keeps a healthy pop, both games should benefit as the developers can't rest on their laurels.
So then you haven't played in a while have you? Quit after issue 12. (which was when Cryptic left but I was not paying attention to that at the time).
They actually give out slots now as veteran rewards. I don't understand though how you are unable to play with your friends on the servers. Yeah, in the old days of 2007 there was no way at all to get additional slots, no way to pay, or vet rewards or nothing. Great to hear they fixed that, since that was one of my biggest peeves with the game If you are making that many different characters to play with the same people then what kind of play style do you have? You mean my 22 Champions? It's because the open build system lets me make so much variety in the characters. Any powers can be combined with any others so the combinations are really endless.
I guess authors write stories to draw discussion in order to make it seem that they have written a good article. This is not the case. This article lacks much validity as much of what it has to say is inaccurate. Once again an MMORPG.com author that does not truly have a grasp of the subject matter has thrown down the gauntlet of inaccuracy to get their share of attention. This one is definitely more of a story than a journalistic article. It should be clear by now that City of Heroes has a very dedicated community of players that will come to defense of their MMORPG (as they have done so once again). I have not played Champions Online. However, to say it is based on Champions the RPG is a travesty. The signature characters from Champions the RPG are in Champions Online - that is it. The mechanics that make Champions the RPG the great RPG that are NOT part of Champions Online. This included the robust, number-crunching character creation systems and the combat system - which were both EXTREMELY balanced and, since they were completely mathematically based, totally written for conversion into a computer format. From what legends say, Cryptic tossed the Champions the RPG mechanics out the window in order to use the NAME on the mechanics that they had started on for what was to be the Marvel Universe MMORPG. I haven't never seen anyone say that this was not the case. So let's go through this inaccurate comparison step by step - most notably correcting your errors in regards to City of Heroes. The article Intro [quote]For five years City of Heroes dominated the Superhero MMOG world, until its developer,
Cryptic Studios, decided to move on and try something new. [/quote] Cryptic Studios left not long after City of Villains (Issue 6) which, I believe, was before the game had even reached the three year mark. But the author is right, they did jump ship to work on the Marvel Universe game. [quote] ,,,and City of Heroes is still going strong having recently released their
16th major content update. [/quote] The CoH Devs are currently working on an expansion to CoH called City of Heroes :: Going Rogue www.cityofheroes.com/goingrogue/en/ COMBAT [quote]The edge however has to go to Champions Online. [/quote] I disagree. This is purely opinion and includes facts that are misleading or just plan false. [quote]Expanding on the action-first motif set
by City of Heroes, players in Champions Online must rely on manual blocking to stave
off attacks from bad guys.[/quote] So basically, this means that in CoH your characters blocking is based on the ability of your character and in Champions Online it is based on your twitch-reflexes, your computer hardware's performance, and your connection speed. [quote]And in place of the standard "mana-pool" mechanic, heroes
use Energy Builders to fuel the use of their special powers.[/quote] Instead of having access to all of your powers like in CoH, you have to use your lower level powers in Champions Online in order to power up BEFORE you can use your higher level attacks. What this means to a City of Heroes player is that your Blaster can't go in and Nuke a group of foes; in Champions Online - apparently - you have to use your basic attacks for a while to build up power to unleash a big attack. Sounds like a downer to me, but to each their own. [quote] Add in the ability to use
the Xbox 360 controller for bashing heads, and the game takes on a decidedly more
action-oriented feel.[/quote] I have been using LogiTech game pads to play City of Heroes since Issue 1 aka you could play with a USB game pad since game launch. I started off with a Rumble Pad, but the Dual Stick Action Pads that I have been using for the last 4 years are the same basic design as a PS2 controller. I play about 90% with the game pad - it doesn't have a built in keyboard and neither does the Xbox 360 controllers that I have seen. [quote]A careful balance of offense and defense is needed, adding
a bit more of strategy to the combat in Champions Online.[/quote] Seriously, did the author even see someone play City of Heroes? Because it sure doesn't seem like they ever played it. Maybe they were just reading the other articles about City of Heroes in MMORPG.com.
GROUPING [quote] Originally solo play was not very viable in City of
Heroes, and this led to a very robust and very popular Looking for Group System. [/quote] I made 22 characters in the first week that I played City of Heroes - back in Issue 1. I made more than one of each archetype. It was easy to play solo with a Scrapper back then - or even a Blaster if you were careful. You could solo with a Tank, but it was very slow. I agree you couldn't solo with Controllers or Defenders. It is by far easier to solo now than it was back then. Why wasn't it so solo-friendly back then? Well City of Heroes was designed with teaming in mind. It wasn't added after the fact like this seems to imply. The archetypes were built with abilities to augment each other so that players would learn to play as part of a team. It's a stealth learning thing, but I'm sure that just goes over some people's heads. So yes, City of Heroes was built for teaming, but even the original game book pointed out which archetypes to play if you wanted to solo. [quote]Over the years since its release, City of Heroes has become far more solo-friendly,
but the community's love of grouping and the focus on team mechanics has remained,
perhaps fostered by the instanced and scalable nature of the game's missions.[/quote] The team mechanics haven't changed. The teaming mechanics haven't really changed much either. The only real change was the SuperSide-Kicking system which is an improved version of the old side-kick system which was released when the game was. The only main mechanic of teaming to change was allowing the leader to "pass the star" aka to promote another team member to the role of team leader which happened in Issue 2. [quote]Champions Online on the other hand was designed from the ground up to allow players to
solo or group depending on their mood. Add to this the less-instanced nature of the game,
and you have an environment that's very difficult to group in, and much more akin to
World of Warcraft. Keep in mind, I am not claiming that grouping or solo-ing is
the better way to play, but if it's a game with an emphasis on team play you're
looking for, City of Heroes is likely more up to snuff.[/quote] From the boards on the City of Heroes side, Champions Online has a very bad teaming mechanic. In fact, the word is that it is better not to team at all because the mechanics for teaming are just that bad. So yeah, teaming is great in City of Heroes - so come join us and be part of a great superhero team! If you play normal City of Heroes content aka the original mission arcs, there are plenty of run around and Arrest # of X in the streets missions - these are not instanced missions. City of Heroes players, in fact, tend to balk at Arrest # of X missions, but that doesn't stop us from fighting villains or enemies in the streets of Paragon City if we want to and we do quite often do so - especially during Rikti Raids, Zombie Apocalypse attacks, or Spiritual disturbances of one form or another - not to mention Giant Monsters roaming around, arsonists setting buildings on fire, etc. etc. etc. MISSIONS [quote] The big focus of gameplay in City of Heroes is its instanced mission system.
They scale to party-size, the difficulty can be set by the party leader, and they
offer players a private way to fight crime away from griefers.[/quote] In City of Heroes, the team leader does not set the mission difficulty, the mission holder does. There are no griefers in City of Heroes. Players that try to do what little griefing that can be done in City of Heroes quickly find their accounts banned. The instance missions aren't to reduce griefing, they are to reduce game lag. Seriously? They allow griefing in Champions Online? That is what this seems to imply. [quote]The downside is that
the random nature of these missions makes them very repetitive in terms of layout
and looks. If you've seen one set of underground caves, you've seen them all. [/quote] In City of Heroes, there are three kinds of cave missions; purple caves, villain caves, and Council Caves. There are several variants of Purple and Villain caves for police/newspaper missions. The normal mission arcs have several unique cave maps. So no, it is not true that if you have seen one cave that you have seen them all. I will, however, say that I am not a big fan of cave maps in general - especially purple caves.
[quote]Champions Online takes the majority of the missions back into the open world, and
instead uses instances to focus on storylines and group-content. [/quote] I found this interesting because of the previous statement of how the instance missions in Champions Online were made to be too crowded for teaming - at least that is the way that I read that section. Seriously, if you wanted to stay outside and fight in City of Heroes you can easily do just that. When I make new characters in City of Heroes, I generally play solo and fight in the streets until somewhere between level 5 and level 10. CRAFTING AND ECONOMY [quote]When City of Heroes launched, there was no gear, no crafting, and no real reason
for heroes to have a bank account.[/quote] Back in the day, we still had influence and there WERE enhancements to buy. In fact before the Market and Crafting were added to the game, I had several characters that did NOT have enough influence to be able to fill their enhancement slots with the preferable slots for their level by the time they were over level 30. [quote]It turns out that players really missed this
layer to the game, and in due time Cryptic added a crafting system and an auction
house to the game. [/quote] Well, you know, Cryptic left not long after City of Villains (aka Issue 6) was released. The Market and Crafting weren't release until Issue 9; Cryptic was already gone by this point. [quote]Learning from their past mistakes, Champions Online launched
with both crafting and auctions in the game. Missing from Champions Online however,
though it was only added after launch to City of Heroes, is a guild (or Supergroup)
housing system. The developers have marked this feature down as something they'd
like to do in the future, but that doesn't change the fact that migrants from
Liberty City might miss their old super-hangouts.[/quote] Yeah, bases were added to City of Heroes back in Issue 6 when City of Villains was released. We are on issue 16 now. Looks like Champions Online still doesn't have bases. Huh. And Cryptic said have it down on their list of things that they might do. Interesting. Liberty City? Okay, did this author even read the Game Informer articles on City of Heroes before writing this article? CHARACTER CREATION [quote]Quite possibly the most revered standard set by City of Heroes was its in depth
character creation system. ... Though the costume options are less than what's available in its
five year-old cousin, Champions Online allows far more diversity in terms of
everything from the size of a hero's ears and hands to the way they stand and move.[/quote] I'll give it to Champion Online. Being able to change my ear and hand size was always important to me in character design - yeah, right. In City of Heroes, I can pick different ears and I can modify the side of my characters hands by the type of gloves that they wear. No, I can't make tiny hands or elephant ears in City of Heroes - but nor would I want to. The way that characters stand and move in City of Heroes is affected by the powers you take and the emotes that you use. [quote]I'd like to see someone create a demon-clown-wolf-robot in City of Heroes. [/quote] Beast head - Wolf Chest - Jester - clown colors Arms - robotic Shoulder parts - Horns Lower body - Beast Legs Done. Wow. That was really hard. The author's lack of knowledge of City of Heroes is quite astonishing. Seriously. The author appears to be fairly clues of the basic information that can be found on the City of Heroes website and with very little research. Truth in journalism seems to be a forgotten trade these days in general, but still - even so..come on! [quote]Add in the classless power system that Champions Online has in place, allowing
for a remarkable number of combinations of superpowers, and I dare say
Champions Online wins in this department.[/quote] City of Heroes has a remarkable number of combination of super powers. You also get 12 character slots on 11 servers giving you a base number of 132 characters. You can add more character slots to server for up to 36 characters per server. From what I hear you have 8 character slots on Champions Online. 8 characters versus 132 characters per account. Sounds like City of Heroes wins to me. But then again, I have 139 City of Heroes characters at this point, and I don't have to rebuilt a character from ground up to enjoy a different set of powers. I would definitely say that that is a plus. CONTENT [quote] This is a topic that is kind of unfair to draw comparisons on. [/quote] Then why did the author bring it up? [quote]City of Heroes
has the advantage of five post-launch years of development. They have the advantage
of the Mission Architect system that allows players to create new missions from
scratch. There are two full games worth of content if a player owns both the Hero
and Villain side of things.[/quote] There is only City of Heroes now. City of Villains is part of City of Heroes. Buy a copy of either and you can play both. [quote]This doesn't change the fact that Champions Online
has the edge in terms of less repetitive quest content, more diverse locales to
adventure in, and the added boon of the Nemesis System which allows players to
create their own archenemy and face them throughout the life of their character.[/quote] I would like to see an actual mission count on this because I don't think this is the case. Outside of the normal mission content in City of Heroes (which includes City of Villains, in case you missed that before) which was designed as unique content for 5 different character origins (on the hero side), there are over 200,000 player created missions. Some of those are like DEV content, but I'm sure there are well over 10 thousand that are nothing like the DEVs created other than the map sets that are used for the missions. More diverse? I doubt that as well. Get some number going to prove it. City of Heroes has far more zones than Champions Online - and, no, the city zones are not the same - they each have different flavors of architecture and lay-out. No outer space in City of Heroes - you'll just have to settle for the Steve Ditko-esque Shadow Shard. City of Heroes has far more content than Champions Online. Good luck catching up, Cryptic. PVP [quote]City of Heroes added in a fairly successful PvP system when City of Villains launched. [/quote] City of Villains was issue 6. PvP in City of Heroes started with the Arena in Issue 4.
[quote]... but only Champions allows players to
become zombies and kill zombies while fighting each other...[/quote] I thought that was only during Champions Online's Holloween event? I could be wrong, but at least I'm admitting that I may not know what I'm talking about. In City of Heroes, you can't get bit by zombie and become a zombie, but you can create a zombie character and you certainly can create a zombie mastermind on the villains side (without needing to find a zombie to bite you) and order your zombie minions to attack your foes. I should know, I have several zombie masterminds ....oh, did I forget to say that City of Heroes comes with access to 11 server and 12 character slots per server where-as Champion Online apparently only has 8 character slots total ...hey, that's like 4 character slots less than one servers worth on CoH! CONCLUSION [quote]A lot of players once dismissed Champions Online as the unofficial sequel
to City of Heroes. But such a comparison is similar to calling Warhammer
Online a sequel to Dark Age of Camelot. Surely both games are created by
the same development studio, and indeed they share a lot of similarities,
but when playing each it's not hard to find the differences in controls,
content, and general feel of the two games.[/quote] Let's see. City of Heroes is what it still is - a great superhero MMORPG in it's down unique universe. Champions Online was going to be Marvel Universe Online, but it fell through, and then it became a game based on Champions the RPG - but all the game mechanics that made Champions the RPG great were thrown out ...and the Signature characters of Champions Online were kept. Yeah, those signature characters that we always thought were created as jokes as now not to make Champions the RPG characters - seriously, Foxbat had all his powers in a pistol that could easily be snatched away from him! So how exactly is Champions Online a sequel to City of Heroes? [quote]The biggest disparities lie
in the breadth of the game world, the mission content, the combat, and
the player-created content. [/quote] City of Heroes has more zones than Champions Online. There are more mission in City of Heroes than there are in Champions Online. Sure, there are even differences in combat in City of Heroes between PvE and PvP. Yeah, you are right about that - Champions Online as NO player created content other than the characters themselves. [quote]Depending on a player's taste, each game offers
something unique to the superhero MMOG. [quote] If you are interested in a superhero game with a helpful and friendly community of players that love the game, do yourself a favor and check out City of Heroes - at least check out the free trial (see the City of Heroes website for details). [quote]The only question in my mind after
extensive time with both is what will DC Universe Online bring to the table
to make itself stand out, or will its more familiar intellectual property be
more than enough?[/quote] Seriously? What percentage of games based on DC comics were/are any good? DC Universe will only be competition for City of Heroes in the long run if it has decent content. It may distract CoH players for a while, but there are quite a number of players that leave only to come back to Paragon City decrying how bad their experience was elsewhere - and that includes Champions Online! Long live City of Heroes!
City of Heroes is a wonderful game. I played it until Champions Online's open beta. Personally I prefer Champions Online. I only quoted your post due to some fairly egregious inaccuracies. You admit to the fact that you have not played Championss Online and yet seem to believe that you are able to comment on the accuracy of the comparison. Your belief is inaccurate. After 25+ years of playing the Champions PnP RPG (currently GMing one campaign and playing in a another-oddly enough I am currently working on a campaign set in the COX universe), and having played Chamions Online since beta, I can accurately state, from experience, that CO captures the essence of the original IP. Is it an exact translation ? Of course not. A system as completely open to abuse as the original game would be all but impossible to translate into a format where there is no GM telling you that you cannot spend your starting points on a power that can destroy the solar system (with personal immunity of course). Instead what CO provides is a game where a player can choose any power he wishes. He can then apply advantages to customize the powers to suit his taste. Start with a concept then mix and match powers and advantages til you get it. Which was, of course, the whole point behind the original champions RPG. There is no, "travesty, " here. NCsoft took over COX in late 2007 and continued with material that Cryptic had been developing before their departure. I was under the impression that issue 9 was released well before that. Champions, the pen and paper version, is definately not balanced. Multiple editions of the game even include disclaimers, using graphic icons, admitting to the unbalanced nature of many of its powers. If the writers of the game say its not balanced, how can you argue otherwise ? No completely open game is meant to be balanced. One character built on starting superhero points might be unable to fight a small group of pistol armed thugs, while another could destroy entire fleets of invading alien star destroyers. Ive created both sorts of characters over the last 25 years playing Champions. Having more, non urban, environments is arguably more diverse than having different zones within the same greater metropolitan area. Personally I wish CO's primary urban setting was more expansive but I think that the ability to travel to distant jungles, arctic wilderness, radioactive desert, and lost civilizations beneath the sea is on a completely different level of diversity than moving from one neighborhood to another in one city. You say that COX has more zones than CO. You are right, CO is less than six months old. Because of the nature of the different zones that is a matter of depth, not breadth. COX's urban environment is explored in far greater depth than is the case of CO's similar environment. The writer is correct, however, that CO has more breadth. See my comment about diversity above. As regards to character creation flexibility. Champions Online does offer more options than COX. Sure I can create more characters in COX but each individual character in CO is much more customizable. I can create a character who is a master swordsman, uses guns for causing ranged mayhem, and uses his psionics to telekinetically hurl massive objects at those groups of foes he hasnt already mesmerized with his telepathy. I can create a flying brick/tank character with laser eye beams, superpowered breath, superspeed, and immense strength. Even a martial artist character with stealth, acrobatics, swinglines, a functional utility belt filled with all sorts of amazing (and devastating) toys, and a swingline gun. This is getting really long so I'll wrap things up. Ultimately what I am saying is that the writer's comparison is not a bad one. He is not saying that COX is a bad game, nor is he saying that CO is a better game. He is saying that Cryptic did at least try to learn from their experience with COX and that they have attempted, with some degree of success, to build on that experience. Currently CO's only real problem is that we are devouring its content very quickly. Not a new phenomenon in MMO's. THe gameplay is fast and engaging. The grahic quality is stunning. The character creation options are mind boggling. Its a good game and will be a great game if Cryptic keeps up with the demand for content.
Long Live City of Heroes, Long Live Champions Online.
When all has been said and done, more will have been said than done.
8 characters versus 132 characters per account. Sounds like City of Heroes wins to me. CoH loses badly in this area. When I played CoH I quickly filled all my slots on the liberty server, and since all my friends were on the liberty server, there was no way for me to ever make more than 8 characters in that game to play with my friends. In contrast, I already have 22 characters in Champions Online, and all of my characters can play with all of my friends characters, no artificial server boundaries exist to separate us. 22 characters without leaving my friends behind, is much more valuable then 8 characters with my friends and 124 character somewhere else.
Not if you're stuck in the European CoH Ghetto; pretty short of slots over here with only two english servers.
But pretty short on players too.
CoH is practically dead in the EU, they destroyed the EU community by rolling the forums into the US ones, but not the game servers; CO's single-world approach beats that hands down for me - and hey, much less lag too.
If CoH closed down the EU arm and merged the server list it, I'm betting it would get an awful lot of players back.
There's no option to reduce the chest size, so apparently all superheroes need to be at least 7 feet tall and 5 wide to accommodate their ponderous pectorals.
Your opinion about the relative merits of the two games is, of course, completely valid. I am only quoting you to clarify one point. There are two sliders for chest size in the CO character creator. One for width of chest, the other for depth.
When all has been said and done, more will have been said than done.
Wow this is a genuinely misleading and poorly substantiated article; CO and CoH are indeed similar in (too) many ways but its the smaller details and design philosophy that make CoH a much more rounded and satisfying experience. If all you want to do is level an avatar for its own sake CO is the bomb...but for anyone who wants any degree of variety, immersion or involvement in their online experience CoH is lightyears ahead!
Combat
As someone eloquently put it 11221111<Block>221111222<Block>111 will get most everything done save the cheesiest of bosses, can you really call it action when the design of the system needs no real interaction? In truth this is not simply the combat system at fault but there is a total absence of variety in NPC AI 95% of the enemies attack with the same sequence and the same attack types (powers may look different...but look is all it amounts to). During the most recent free weekened I was comfortably able to level my character without missing a moment of the tv show QI...I guess its good if you want to play a game you dont have to look at mind.
Grouping
A bit of a toss up!!!!!! What are you talking about there is NO CONTEST, grouping or soloing in both games is possible but it is profoundly unrewarding on every level in CO, equally playstyle and tactics play no relevent part in CO gameplay whether grouped or not - yes you can alter your style but it is in no way nescessary, natural or even efficient to do so. Playing in a group in CoH is a very different experience to playing solo...its called variety...a important feature that CO doesn't have any of!
Missions
I grant its a closer battle here the instances of CoH are not very varied, heavily overused and repetitive. However you have two ways to complete most missions (go in all guns blazing or sneak and take out the boss) - in CO the few (very few) breaks from 'Do X of Y' task offer no such option. Similarly in CoH you are offered choices that effect who you will face and the storylines you will become involved in, different enemies have different stregths and weakeness so this actually provides a degree of variety in how the time passes. There is no room for style or choice in CO - no matter what your powers, no matter what your look, no matter what your ambition, your style, your level of aggression you are relentlessly driven on one path, less hero more super agent thug X...there is nothing whatsoever that makes the slightest difference. Add to this some very poor zone layout, mission locations and rapid respawns and the game conspires to ensure the evident futililty of every task you are given. I'd rate CO as not only worse than CoH but perhaps the worse Gameworld and Questing engine of ANY mmo still running.
Crafting and Economy.
Tedious timesumps in both games.... in terms of additonal features CoH has so much more its not even worth considering at this stage.
Character Creation
Yes there is more you can do with CO, but you do have to accept those cartoon style graphics which reflect a more irreverent and self conscious view of comic-dom. Its also odd just how many CoH character designs you cant get quite right. Its really improving something that was more than good enough imo. As for the power diversity, this would be a run away win for CO if it had any impact on world interaction or journey however powers are so superficial and irrelevent to the gameworld the feautre counts for nothing.
Content
CO is notable for bringing nothing new to the table, so the only relevent comment re content is how much much less there is.......imagine the absolute miminum volume of content you would think consider for a single play through and then half it.
CoH is in an entirely different league in terms of content volume and variety (although I concede the variety is still way too limited and not really on a level with most Fantasy mmos).
PvP
Well both games have big issues, the balance is appaling in CoH between certain classes, but there are competitive matches to be had with others..... the chances of a balanced contest in CO are almost nil and without villain play there is no thematic justification for pvp its just a joke, like most of CO's missions its an irrelevent game within an irrelevent game (though curiously fun on occasion).
Conclusion
Experience, knowledge, oppertunity were all presented to Cryptic with CO, its sad they did nothing with it, the principle differences between it and CoH, are down to the convicition in the theme - in CoH this makes the game experience more than the sum of its parts and time has ensured it provides a much more more rounded esprience, in CO content is arbitrary, inconsistent and often self destructive to fun or variety, it has one lone area of appeal - the character creator.
COH is a game designed to realise and occupy a superhero into a persistent world, CO is a sterile and basic engine to display an avatar.
So then you haven't played in a while have you? Quit after issue 12. (which was when Cryptic left but I was not paying attention to that at the time).
They actually give out slots now as veteran rewards. I don't understand though how you are unable to play with your friends on the servers. Yeah, in the old days of 2007 there was no way at all to get additional slots, no way to pay, or vet rewards or nothing. Great to hear they fixed that, since that was one of my biggest peeves with the game If you are making that many different characters to play with the same people then what kind of play style do you have? You mean my 22 Champions? It's because the open build system lets me make so much variety in the characters. Any powers can be combined with any others so the combinations are really endless.
Oh that is right they don't have a clearly defined respec system like City of Heroes/Villains. I tested CO and it was ok I won't come out and say it is the worst of the two games they both have things they can improve upon. I like the open word server idea of CO, but the lack of character slots kinda gets me and then there is the whole way to build your character up. I had a friend who was fairly new to MMO type games but not new to comics and he completely gimped his first 4 characters he made on CO.
"You think this "A" stands for France?" Captain America
I played CoH/CoV (aka CoX) for about 9 months with my son (age 8) and had a blast. (FluShots on the Freedom server). Mr-E, who posted earlier in this thread and others were great. I highly recommend joining them if you are currently playing that game.
I started playing CO just a little before open beta. Some how I got a closed beta invite. I've enjoyed every bit of the game and even carried over a CoH tradition by starting to hold costume contests in the CO Forums. The creator and graphics in CO are a thousand times better than CoH. So much so that this is a major reason I can not go back to CoH now which is sad since there are some really great people that I played CoH with.
CO does a great job of helping the solo player. You can create whatever type of character you want because of the vastly superior costume creator and classless power system. But, alas, this is the greatest weakness of CO. The thing I liked the best about CoH was teaming. Task Forces, Radio Missions, etc. I played as a healer and loved the fact that I could make or brake the team. You really dont find that in CO. Instead you get a lot of individuals who may group up for social reasons or a few team missions (like the end game lair, NemCon). Often they will be the equivalent of a scrapper who might have some buff/debuff powers but no one is a true support toon.
Things are changing in CO, though. I think that the developers have recently understood that we LIKE the holy trinity (Tank, DPS, Support) and want a reason for them in CO, too. Sure, we all like being able to solo but we want their to be a reason for us to build up powers to use as a tank, etc.
I've found that BOTH games are great. Some players don't mind the older more built up game of CoH. Others will find the freedom of a classless system, improved graphics to be more their style.
If you are at all interested in the CO, then send me an PM and I'll give you a referral code. You'll be able to try out the game for quite a while and I'll be happy to team up with you and show you around. Who knows, maybe you'll like the game after seeing for yourself.
Here's to a healthy, happy, mature, non-emo superhero MMO world,
I have played CoX since beta and was able to play in the CO beta as well and in my opinion, the only thing that CO has over CoX is the body and face mod capabilities of the character creator and a swinging travel power. CO's biggest downfall is the cel shaded look of the game. It's far too cartoony for my tastes.
So then you haven't played in a while have you? Quit after issue 12. (which was when Cryptic left but I was not paying attention to that at the time).
They actually give out slots now as veteran rewards. I don't understand though how you are unable to play with your friends on the servers. Yeah, in the old days of 2007 there was no way at all to get additional slots, no way to pay, or vet rewards or nothing. Great to hear they fixed that, since that was one of my biggest peeves with the game If you are making that many different characters to play with the same people then what kind of play style do you have? You mean my 22 Champions? It's because the open build system lets me make so much variety in the characters. Any powers can be combined with any others so the combinations are really endless.
Oh that is right they don't have a clearly defined respec system like City of Heroes/Villains.
Clearly defined? This just sounds like an issue with learning the system. When I played CoX, you would pick your new power and immediately be stuck with it. There was no such thing as trying out different powers before picking your new one. The only way to ever change your powers was to do an all at once respec, after grinding through a several hour long task force, and if you make a mistake at that time it is very inconvenient.
In CO we have the powerhouse, which is an instanced area where you can try new powers and respec them out immediately, with no penalties at all (once you take your new power outside the powerhouse, then it cost in-game resources to change the power, but at least you don't need to change all of your powers at once or grind to do so, and again the ability to preview powers is something CoX badly lacked).
8 characters versus 132 characters per account. Sounds like City of Heroes wins to me. CoH loses badly in this area. When I played CoH I quickly filled all my slots on the liberty server, and since all my friends were on the liberty server, there was no way for me to ever make more than 8 characters in that game to play with my friends. In contrast, I already have 22 characters in Champions Online, and all of my characters can play with all of my friends characters, no artificial server boundaries exist to separate us. 22 characters without leaving my friends behind, is much more valuable then 8 characters with my friends and 124 character somewhere else.
First of all, the default number of characters is no longer 8, it is 12. Second, you are aware that in City of Heroes you can buy new character slots from the store and you get them as veteran rewards, right? For example, on my main server I have 14 character slots, and also a few unused ones that I can apply to any server from veteran rewards.
How did you get 22 character slots? You probably bought them from the C-Store.
So then you haven't played in a while have you? Quit after issue 12. (which was when Cryptic left but I was not paying attention to that at the time).
They actually give out slots now as veteran rewards. I don't understand though how you are unable to play with your friends on the servers. Yeah, in the old days of 2007 there was no way at all to get additional slots, no way to pay, or vet rewards or nothing. Great to hear they fixed that, since that was one of my biggest peeves with the game If you are making that many different characters to play with the same people then what kind of play style do you have? You mean my 22 Champions? It's because the open build system lets me make so much variety in the characters. Any powers can be combined with any others so the combinations are really endless.
Oh that is right they don't have a clearly defined respec system like City of Heroes/Villains.
Clearly defined? This just sounds like an issue with learning the system. When I played CoX, you would pick your new power and immediately be stuck with it. There was no such thing as trying out different powers before picking your new one. The only way to ever change your powers was to do an all at once respec, after grinding through a several hour long task force, and if you make a mistake at that time it is very inconvenient.
In CO we have the powerhouse, which is an instanced area where you can try new powers and respec them out immediately, with no penalties at all (once you take your new power outside the powerhouse, then it cost in-game resources to change the power, but at least you don't need to change all of your powers at once or grind to do so, and again the ability to preview powers is something CoX badly lacked).
Honestly I think now you are just trying to prove your point about CO being better at this and that than CoX. They both have features that are good and bad you have to agree with that.
On the powers thing I usually know by reading the description what a particular power does and if you know your AT in CoX then you pretty much know what you are getting as far as powers go. You can read the description for each power in each set in CoX.
"You think this "A" stands for France?" Captain America
Comments
I tend to think CO is the prettier more diverse game but like I'm finding in EQ2 grouping is really just not easy. CoH has always been what WoW finally is... super easy to do the whole MMO thing in. It is however repetitive and even the mission arcs and task forces are rehashed zone pieces with some exceptions.
Because of that they both suffer from bite-size-play-session-itis. But for punching a bad guy in the face... really no better choice
Although I enjoyed CoH, it does get boring due to the lame NPC AI - you could wish that the bad guys would at least be running out from their hideouts to terrorize the populace instead of just all over the streets in the open.
However, I couldn't get into CO at all. The vaunted char creation system was an amazing pain in the @ss for me. I must have spent a half hour each in two tries, and I couldn't create a regular sized guy without him having a huge set of manboobs lol. There's no option to reduce the chest size, so apparently all superheroes need to be at least 7 feet tall and 5 wide to accommodate their ponderous pectorals.
When I tried the gameplay, it seemed very staged - hey look, run up to that cop and get a mission! Wow, how immersive and engaging! *facepalm. The comic book coloring was the last straw- I just hate it. I find CoH's old-school, EQ 1.5-era technology to produce far better looking characters, and hey, on my machine, I can turn them all the way up without any slowdown.
So, while CoH is kinda stale now, CO was a disappointment for me, so I'd have to rate CoH as the winner here.
I guess authors write stories to draw discussion in order to make it seem that they have written a good article.
This is not the case. This article lacks much validity as much of what it has to say is inaccurate. Once again an MMORPG.com author that does not truly have a grasp of the subject matter has thrown down the gauntlet of inaccuracy to get their share of attention.
This one is definitely more of a story than a journalistic article.
It should be clear by now that City of Heroes has a very dedicated community of players that will come to defense of their MMORPG (as they have done so once again).
I have not played Champions Online. However, to say it is based on Champions the RPG is a travesty. The signature characters from Champions the RPG are in Champions Online - that is it. The mechanics that make Champions the RPG the great RPG that are NOT part of Champions Online. This included the robust, number-crunching character creation systems and the combat system - which were both EXTREMELY balanced and, since they were completely mathematically based, totally written for conversion into a computer format. From what legends say, Cryptic tossed the Champions the RPG mechanics out the window in order to use the NAME on the mechanics that they had started on for what was to be the Marvel Universe MMORPG. I haven't never seen anyone say that this was not the case.
So let's go through this inaccurate comparison step by step - most notably correcting your errors in regards to City of Heroes.
The article Intro
[quote]For five years City of Heroes dominated the Superhero MMOG world, until its developer,
Cryptic Studios, decided to move on and try something new. [/quote]
Cryptic Studios left not long after City of Villains (Issue 6) which, I believe, was before the game had even reached the three year mark. But the author is right, they did jump ship to work on the Marvel Universe game.
[quote] ,,,and City of Heroes is still going strong having recently released their
16th major content update. [/quote]
The CoH Devs are currently working on an expansion to CoH called City of Heroes :: Going Rogue www.cityofheroes.com/goingrogue/en/
COMBAT
[quote]The edge however has to go to Champions Online. [/quote]
I disagree. This is purely opinion and includes facts that are misleading or just plan false.
[quote]Expanding on the action-first motif set
by City of Heroes, players in Champions Online must rely on manual blocking to stave
off attacks from bad guys.[/quote]
So basically, this means that in CoH your characters blocking is based on the ability of your character and in Champions Online it is based on your twitch-reflexes, your computer hardware's performance, and your connection speed.
[quote]And in place of the standard "mana-pool" mechanic, heroes
use Energy Builders to fuel the use of their special powers.[/quote]
Instead of having access to all of your powers like in CoH, you have to use your lower level powers in Champions Online in order to power up BEFORE you can use your higher level attacks. What this means to a City of Heroes player is that your Blaster can't go in and Nuke a group of foes; in Champions Online - apparently - you have to use your basic attacks for a while to build up power to unleash a big attack. Sounds like a downer to me, but to each their own.
[quote] Add in the ability to use
the Xbox 360 controller for bashing heads, and the game takes on a decidedly more
action-oriented feel.[/quote]
I have been using LogiTech game pads to play City of Heroes since Issue 1 aka you could play with a USB game pad since game launch. I started off with a Rumble Pad, but the Dual Stick Action Pads that I have been using for the last 4 years are the same basic design as a PS2 controller. I play about 90% with the game pad - it doesn't have a built in keyboard and neither does the Xbox 360 controllers that I have seen.
[quote]A careful balance of offense and defense is needed, adding
a bit more of strategy to the combat in Champions Online.[/quote]
Seriously, did the author even see someone play City of Heroes? Because it sure doesn't seem like they ever played it. Maybe they were just reading the other articles about City of Heroes in MMORPG.com.
GROUPING
[quote] Originally solo play was not very viable in City of
Heroes, and this led to a very robust and very popular Looking for Group System. [/quote]
I made 22 characters in the first week that I played City of Heroes - back in Issue 1. I made more than one of each archetype. It was easy to play solo with a Scrapper back then - or even a Blaster if you were careful. You could solo with a Tank, but it was very slow. I agree you couldn't solo with Controllers or Defenders. It is by far easier to solo now than it was back then.
Why wasn't it so solo-friendly back then? Well City of Heroes was designed with teaming in mind. It wasn't added after the fact like this seems to imply. The archetypes were built with abilities to augment each other so that players would learn to play as part of a team. It's a stealth learning thing, but I'm sure that just goes over some people's heads. So yes, City of Heroes was built for teaming, but even the original game book pointed out which archetypes to play if you wanted to solo.
[quote]Over the years since its release, City of Heroes has become far more solo-friendly,
but the community's love of grouping and the focus on team mechanics has remained,
perhaps fostered by the instanced and scalable nature of the game's missions.[/quote]
The team mechanics haven't changed. The teaming mechanics haven't really changed much either. The only real change was the SuperSide-Kicking system which is an improved version of the old side-kick system which was released when the game was. The only main mechanic of teaming to change was allowing the leader to "pass the star" aka to promote another team member to the role of team leader which happened in Issue 2.
[quote]Champions Online on the other hand was designed from the ground up to allow players to
solo or group depending on their mood. Add to this the less-instanced nature of the game,
and you have an environment that's very difficult to group in, and much more akin to
World of Warcraft. Keep in mind, I am not claiming that grouping or solo-ing is
the better way to play, but if it's a game with an emphasis on team play you're
looking for, City of Heroes is likely more up to snuff.[/quote]
From the boards on the City of Heroes side, Champions Online has a very bad teaming mechanic. In fact, the word is that it is better not to team at all because the mechanics for teaming are just that bad. So yeah, teaming is great in City of Heroes - so come join us and be part of a great superhero team!
If you play normal City of Heroes content aka the original mission arcs, there are plenty of run around and Arrest # of X in the streets missions - these are not instanced missions. City of Heroes players, in fact, tend to balk at Arrest # of X missions, but that doesn't stop us from fighting villains or enemies in the streets of Paragon City if we want to and we do quite often do so - especially during Rikti Raids, Zombie Apocalypse attacks, or Spiritual disturbances of one form or another - not to mention Giant Monsters roaming around, arsonists setting buildings on fire, etc. etc. etc.
MISSIONS
[quote] The big focus of gameplay in City of Heroes is its instanced mission system.
They scale to party-size, the difficulty can be set by the party leader, and they
offer players a private way to fight crime away from griefers.[/quote]
In City of Heroes, the team leader does not set the mission difficulty, the mission holder does.
There are no griefers in City of Heroes. Players that try to do what little griefing that can be done in City of Heroes quickly find their accounts banned. The instance missions aren't to reduce griefing, they are to reduce game lag.
Seriously? They allow griefing in Champions Online? That is what this seems to imply.
[quote]The downside is that
the random nature of these missions makes them very repetitive in terms of layout
and looks. If you've seen one set of underground caves, you've seen them all. [/quote]
In City of Heroes, there are three kinds of cave missions; purple caves, villain caves, and Council Caves. There are several variants of Purple and Villain caves for police/newspaper missions. The normal mission arcs have several unique cave maps.
So no, it is not true that if you have seen one cave that you have seen them all. I will, however, say that I am not a big fan of cave maps in general - especially purple caves.
[quote]Champions Online takes the majority of the missions back into the open world, and
instead uses instances to focus on storylines and group-content. [/quote]
I found this interesting because of the previous statement of how the instance missions in Champions Online were made to be too crowded for teaming - at least that is the way that I read that section.
Seriously, if you wanted to stay outside and fight in City of Heroes you can easily do just that. When I make new characters in City of Heroes, I generally play solo and fight in the streets until somewhere between level 5 and level 10.
CRAFTING AND ECONOMY
[quote]When City of Heroes launched, there was no gear, no crafting, and no real reason
for heroes to have a bank account.[/quote]
Back in the day, we still had influence and there WERE enhancements to buy. In fact before the Market and Crafting were added to the game, I had several characters that did NOT have enough influence to be able to fill their enhancement slots with the preferable slots for their level by the time they were over level 30.
[quote]It turns out that players really missed this
layer to the game, and in due time Cryptic added a crafting system and an auction
house to the game. [/quote]
Well, you know, Cryptic left not long after City of Villains (aka Issue 6) was released.
The Market and Crafting weren't release until Issue 9; Cryptic was already gone by this point.
[quote]Learning from their past mistakes, Champions Online launched
with both crafting and auctions in the game. Missing from Champions Online however,
though it was only added after launch to City of Heroes, is a guild (or Supergroup)
housing system. The developers have marked this feature down as something they'd
like to do in the future, but that doesn't change the fact that migrants from
Liberty City might miss their old super-hangouts.[/quote]
Yeah, bases were added to City of Heroes back in Issue 6 when City of Villains was released. We are on issue 16 now.
Looks like Champions Online still doesn't have bases. Huh. And Cryptic said have it down on their list of things that they might do. Interesting.
Liberty City? Okay, did this author even read the Game Informer articles on City of Heroes before writing this article?
CHARACTER CREATION
[quote]Quite possibly the most revered standard set by City of Heroes was its in depth
character creation system. ... Though the costume options are less than what's available in its
five year-old cousin, Champions Online allows far more diversity in terms of
everything from the size of a hero's ears and hands to the way they stand and move.[/quote]
I'll give it to Champion Online. Being able to change my ear and hand size was always important to me in character design - yeah, right. In City of Heroes, I can pick different ears and I can modify the side of my characters hands by the type of gloves that they wear. No, I can't make tiny hands or elephant ears in City of Heroes - but nor would I want to.
The way that characters stand and move in City of Heroes is affected by the powers you take and the emotes that you use.
[quote]I'd like to see someone create a demon-clown-wolf-robot in City of Heroes. [/quote]
Beast head - Wolf
Chest - Jester - clown colors
Arms - robotic
Shoulder parts - Horns
Lower body - Beast Legs
Done. Wow. That was really hard. The author's lack of knowledge of City of Heroes is quite astonishing. Seriously. The author appears to be fairly clues of the basic information that can be found on the City of Heroes website and with very little research. Truth in journalism seems to be a forgotten trade these days in general, but still - even so..come on!
[quote]Add in the classless power system that Champions Online has in place, allowing
for a remarkable number of combinations of superpowers, and I dare say
Champions Online wins in this department.[/quote]
City of Heroes has a remarkable number of combination of super powers. You also get 12 character slots on 11 servers giving you a base number of 132 characters. You can add more character slots to server for up to 36 characters per server.
From what I hear you have 8 character slots on Champions Online.
8 characters versus 132 characters per account. Sounds like City of Heroes wins to me. But then again, I have 139 City of Heroes characters at this point, and I don't have to rebuilt a character from ground up to enjoy a different set of powers. I would definitely say that that is a plus.
CONTENT
[quote] This is a topic that is kind of unfair to draw comparisons on. [/quote]
Then why did the author bring it up?
[quote]City of Heroes
has the advantage of five post-launch years of development. They have the advantage
of the Mission Architect system that allows players to create new missions from
scratch. There are two full games worth of content if a player owns both the Hero
and Villain side of things.[/quote]
There is only City of Heroes now. City of Villains is part of City of Heroes. Buy a copy of either and you can play both.
[quote]This doesn't change the fact that Champions Online
has the edge in terms of less repetitive quest content, more diverse locales to
adventure in, and the added boon of the Nemesis System which allows players to
create their own archenemy and face them throughout the life of their character.[/quote]
I would like to see an actual mission count on this because I don't think this is the case. Outside of the normal mission content in City of Heroes (which includes City of Villains, in case you missed that before) which was designed as unique content for 5 different character origins (on the hero side), there are over 200,000 player created missions. Some of those are like DEV content, but I'm sure there are well over 10 thousand that are nothing like the DEVs created other than the map sets that are used for the missions.
More diverse? I doubt that as well. Get some number going to prove it. City of Heroes has far more zones than Champions Online - and, no, the city zones are not the same - they each have different flavors of architecture and lay-out. No outer space in City of Heroes - you'll just have to settle for the Steve Ditko-esque Shadow Shard.
City of Heroes has far more content than Champions Online. Good luck catching up, Cryptic.
PVP
[quote]City of Heroes added in a fairly successful PvP system when City of Villains launched. [/quote]
City of Villains was issue 6. PvP in City of Heroes started with the Arena in Issue 4.
[quote]... but only Champions allows players to
become zombies and kill zombies while fighting each other...[/quote]
I thought that was only during Champions Online's Holloween event? I could be wrong, but at least I'm admitting that I may not know what I'm talking about.
In City of Heroes, you can't get bit by zombie and become a zombie, but you can create a zombie character and you certainly can create a zombie mastermind on the villains side (without needing to find a zombie to bite you) and order your zombie minions to attack your foes. I should know, I have several zombie masterminds ....oh, did I forget to say that City of Heroes comes with access to 11 server and 12 character slots per server where-as Champion Online apparently only has 8 character slots total ...hey, that's like 4 character slots less than one servers worth on CoH!
CONCLUSION
[quote]A lot of players once dismissed Champions Online as the unofficial sequel
to City of Heroes. But such a comparison is similar to calling Warhammer
Online a sequel to Dark Age of Camelot. Surely both games are created by
the same development studio, and indeed they share a lot of similarities,
but when playing each it's not hard to find the differences in controls,
content, and general feel of the two games.[/quote]
Let's see.
City of Heroes is what it still is - a great superhero MMORPG in it's down unique universe.
Champions Online was going to be Marvel Universe Online, but it fell through, and then it became a game based on Champions the RPG - but all the game mechanics that made Champions the RPG great were thrown out ...and the Signature characters of Champions Online were kept. Yeah, those signature characters that we always thought were created as jokes as now not to make Champions the RPG characters - seriously, Foxbat had all his powers in a pistol that could easily be snatched away from him!
So how exactly is Champions Online a sequel to City of Heroes?
[quote]The biggest disparities lie
in the breadth of the game world, the mission content, the combat, and
the player-created content. [/quote]
City of Heroes has more zones than Champions Online.
There are more mission in City of Heroes than there are in Champions Online.
Sure, there are even differences in combat in City of Heroes between PvE and PvP.
Yeah, you are right about that - Champions Online as NO player created content other than the characters themselves.
[quote]Depending on a player's taste, each game offers
something unique to the superhero MMOG. [quote]
If you are interested in a superhero game with a helpful and friendly community of players that love the game, do yourself a favor and check out City of Heroes - at least check out the free trial (see the City of Heroes website for details).
[quote]The only question in my mind after
extensive time with both is what will DC Universe Online bring to the table
to make itself stand out, or will its more familiar intellectual property be
more than enough?[/quote]
Seriously?
What percentage of games based on DC comics were/are any good?
DC Universe will only be competition for City of Heroes in the long run if it has decent content. It may distract CoH players for a while, but there are quite a number of players that leave only to come back to Paragon City decrying how bad their experience was elsewhere - and that includes Champions Online!
Long live City of Heroes!
Be the fire! Stop staring at it!
City of Heroes was never very fun for me, although I played it for two years with some friends. The combat in CoH was unbearably slow, basically I was addicted to speed boost to even accept the game as playable. The endless grind against foes was also pretty boring for me, as were the same few instanced maps. From a superhero point of view, I felt more like I was making the "Tankers" and "Healers" that the developers had per-destined me to play, not anything that reminded me of comic book superheroes, and no real creativity or freedom once the powertrees had been chosen at level 1.
Champions Online addressed all of these problems for me. The combat is the most rapid and responsive that I have seen in an MMO, it reminds me of an action RPG like Diablo. Instead of grinding through foes for XP, the balance is shifted towards doing content, and instead of every mission being in the same warehouse/sewers/factory bleh instanced maps, there are over a 1000 missions in CO that take place in the open world zones. Now I feel like I am creating superheroes and not just following a pre-destined track towards making a fossilized fantasy game archetype. Since when would superman do less damage just because he is invulnerable? You can argue about balancing a classless system, but its pretty hard to argue that those ancient fantasy classes do a good job of capturing the superhero genre.
CO has more rapid combat, and the strikes are solid, not like CoH (when my friends first dragged me into CoH I thought the combat looked like drunk guys exaggerating pro-wrestling techniques. CO does not repeat the same few instanced maps hundreds of times each. CO does not force you to play a "tank" or a "healer", you have much much more creative freedom.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
When I first found out that CoH was coming out... I was thrilled about it, but my hope dimmed quickly when it took up a p2p model, and at the time of its release, this was not an option to me.
So a few years later, when CoH released its trial, I tried it out for a week and gave up.
Then I bought CO when it came out, just from watching one youtube video of it. OH lord, what a huge mistake I had made.
CO definently improves on the graphical side, and the comic-esque graphic made me happy (inside and outside :O), but the game fails to deliver when the game itself does not 'play' like a super-hero game. It felt like I was playing the same MMO I had played before...and not to mention, when you level up the highest amount of skills you can carry around is subpar to that of many MMOs, and many of them are weak or useless- thus cornering you to create 'fotm' templates if you want to progress through the game without much deaths from mobs (and making you unable to really create a 'themed' superhero without severely gimping yourself)
OK, limited skill, GW does that too, right? BLEH, at least in GW you can change your skills around as much as you want... it gets bland and boring in CO after you find 2-3 skills that you'll spam until the heaven splits and the apocalypse comes.
CO is not a superhero game.
CoH has a much slower combat, less emphasis on fast-paced action, but I had more fun playing trial in CoH then I did a month of CO... The first time i grouped with a bunch of random players and went into that sewer was more fun than CO's bland quests... It was more rewarding upgrading my character in CoH then it was picking another stupid poorly described shitty skill in CO.
CoX > CO
stay away from CO
Great article, really enjoyed the read. I'm hoping DCUO brings something new to the table as well, or perhaps just takes whats good about both games and puts them into one game.
This is a good post.
Seriously, this article has so many inaccuracies where it concerns City of heroes/Villains that everyone should be scratching their heads and wondering if the author ever played that game.
Some things that I noticed: the author wasn't at all aware that City of Heroes and City of Villains effectively merged. If you owned the box for one, you own both games. NCSoft did this when they first acquired CoH/V from Cryptic to much fanfare. Paragon Studios now considers them a single game.
The author failed to mention the new CoH/V expansion "Going Rogue," which will feature side switching, further blurring the lines between villains and heroes. It will feature a new "city" and essentially a new faction. Here's a link to the Going Rogue website by the way: www.cityofheroes.com/goingrogue/en/
The author also didn't seem to realize that one can get missions out-doors in non-instanced areas, they are the minority, but they are common enough that they are called "street sweeping mission" by the community. Imagine that! They are so common they have their own unique nomenclature!
I also liked the summary given that blocking in CoH is based on the characters skills and abilities while blocking in CO depends on the players abilities in twitch based gameplay. That seems like a salient point that should have been included in some sort of "comparison" article...
Others have also mentioned that outdoor, non-instanced missions lead to spawn camping, kill stealing, and other unpleasantness while instanced missions mean no kill stealing, no spawn camping, less lag, and other benefits. Hmmm... Seems that a so-called "comparison" article should mention stuff like this...
Anyway, it's fairly obvious that the author of this article has very little knowledge and experience with City of Heroes/Villains. I mean calling the city in CoH "Liberty City" is a big blunder that anyone who's played the game for more than 20 minutes would never make. The author likes Champions Online, dislikes City of Heroes, and decided to write a puff piece bashing one and praising the other. The cynic in me wants to ask "How much did Cryptic pay you to write this little article?"
I very much hope that the editors of MMORPG.com withdraw this travesty of an article and get someone who has actually played CoH and knows what they are talking about to write a new one. I could do a far better job, but I haven't played Champions Online yet.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
8 characters versus 132 characters per account. Sounds like City of Heroes wins to me.
CoH loses badly in this area. When I played CoH I quickly filled all my slots on the liberty server, and since all my friends were on the liberty server, there was no way for me to ever make more than 8 characters in that game to play with my friends. In contrast, I already have 22 characters in Champions Online, and all of my characters can play with all of my friends characters, no artificial server boundaries exist to separate us. 22 characters without leaving my friends behind, is much more valuable then 8 characters with my friends and 124 character somewhere else.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
So then you haven't played in a while have you? They actually give out slots now as veteran rewards. I don't understand though how you are unable to play with your friends on the servers. If you are making that many different characters to play with the same people then what kind of play style do you have? I have still 4 slots open on the server I use most Freedom and I can play with all my friends.
"You think this "A" stands for France?" Captain America
I played both and I feel that CoH is by far the better game.
The reviewer tried to imply that combat requires more strategy in Champions, which isn't the case. You spam whatever power builder you have to then get off a bigger attack, repeat. That's pretty much it.
CoH is far more solo-friendly with the way you can adjust the difficulty settings on viritually ANY mission.
I would say Champions is more geared towards a button-mashing Xbox 360 game than a PC mmo.
As usual, the line is blurred between these two games. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Champions has its more open worlds, its crazy customization options, and a plethora of different powers then CoX. CoX has the development time, the user created content, and more varied content.
In all honesty, they're both cryptic games... and there are too many similarities for me to pick a clear winner. The faster paced combat just feels better for me in CO, but the severe lack of power variations at max level kills the need for so many varied powersets. The slower button click combat of CoX is fun for a little while, but in the end you're stuck in a framework so in the end you've got to reroll and play through the boring content just to experience any of the other sets.
I've played through both games to max level and then some, and honestly, the Super Hero niche can still use tremendous improvement. Lets think about this... the only 2 superhero games that have been created have been from cryptic.. and cryptic. I think its safe ti say we've seen the best they can offer us. I'm not surprised by the lack of innovation on failed mechanics of champions the second time around after seeing how quick and stale the combat of the CoX games got after a few months around the block. The only longetivity is for those that can't let go of the customization given in each game because one things for sure... the combat and content leave way too much to be desired in both games.... I'm interested to see how DCUO turns out... the first non cryptic superhero MMO..... definitely worth a shot.. even if it is SOE.
Wow... there's some serious angst going on in here. The wall of text detailing the many 'inaccuracies' was ironic in the fact that he introduced plenty on the CO side of things. So while accusing the author on not doing his research, he basically did the same thing.
However, I would say that the author of the article liked CO better than CoX. That's fine, it's his opinion. The refutations to the points made are serious nit picks. I have over 36 months in two accounts and over 24 in a third account for CoX. I have a pretty good handle on that game and while he glossed some things over, it wasn't that bad.
Regardless here's my take:
Character Design: Hands down CO
The classes in CoH are a huge limitation to me. It's nice not having to hear the arguments on "Defenders shouldn't do much damage, they are a support class". Great, I want to play a hero who's essentially a scrapper's sidekick... It's very nice to have every character you make be effective in taking down villains. If I need more damage on a toon, I choose another attack power. If I want to focus on team support more, I grab those powers. It's very liberating.
Costume Creator: Push
CO has more fiddly options, but CoX has more overall options. It's also not really fair to compare a new graphics engine to an older one. I do find that it's easier to get a more distinctive hero in CoX, but I do miss some of the newer controls.
Graphics: Slight advantage to CO
While I like the cell shading, you can turn it off if you don't like it. The zones are huge and it's really cool to look over an entire city. The animations are about the same, which was sad, I expected better from CO on this, and CO is missing a lot of emotes which as a RPer I do miss. I think powers tend to be a little more flashy in CoX. However, the zone design in CO is very good and the models are awesome. CoX still has me feeling like I am running in a city of boxes far too often. The Villain areas are much better, but too many of the zones could use a real makeover.
Combat: Push
I do like the frenetic feel to CO's combat and the block mechanism is quite good. However, CoX has a wider variety of powers that I miss from CO. It's higher tier powers also seem to have more ooomph which is what you want after leveling up a toon. Since they have classes, they can tailor encounters to specific power sets to require teaming. It is nice though to be able to grab any 5-6 toons and do missions. If I never hear LF Healer, or LF tank, it will be too soon.
Content: Push
The content that CO has in it is usually better than much of what you get in CoH. It's a newer engine and they have some very cool tricks in what they can do. The nemesis system is quite good and has a lot of potential to be amazing. However, CO is very limited in terms of what it has. You find yourself doing the same missions over and over with the different characters, which is a real drag. So for quality, they did well, for quantity they really missed the boat.
I'm not terribly fond of the enemy groups in either of them... if I had to choose I'd likely take the CoH opponents and go with the CO backstory. CoH's zone wide events are better, but they don't have public quests. CO is also missing 'things to do', which CoH has in abundance. Of course a couple of years might change that. Still for now, even if on a mission for mission basis, I like the CO missions, there just aren't enough of them to keep you excited about their quality.
Guild Support: CoH by far
CO has no real reason to join a SG other than a character slot. The game is incredibly solo friendly (which can be a plus or minus depending on who you are) so you don't need your SG mates for 95% of the game. There is no base features, or other real bonuses except for some storage for SG's in CO. CoH has bases, SG missions, reasons to team, etc. It's not even a contest.
UI: CoH
This likely has to do with the maturity of the engine, but I think they have done an excellent job with the UI. CO's isn't bad, but it needs some work to really feel polished.
PvP: Neither
I thought about this one for a long time. A few issues ago, PvP in CoH was fun, but very difficult to actually get a toon to be competitive. That was a huge flaw. Now it's easy to get into and kind of lame. COs PvP suffers from the build of the month to a degree that makes CoH's build issues laughable. Since anyone can take any power, the powers that are OPed get taken in every serious PvP build. I like COs games for PvP a bit more, but neither of them really excels in this area. CO is missing villians in a big way!
Developers: CoH
While I have no real problem with COs staff, the folks in Paragon Studios have done some amazing work recently. We'll see what they come up with on Going Rogue which should be very interesting. COs dev's do listen, but there is a perception that the company is more focused on STO. Not sure whether it's true or not, but it would be hard to match the work that the CoH devs have put in over the past couple years.
Architecture: CO
Being able to play with anyone in the game is wonderful ('one server world'). Being able to choose whatever you want for a hero name is a godsend. Those are features I would love to see in far more games.
Overall: Push
I'm currently playing CO, and have dropped my sub to CoX. However, that's not because I don't like CoX. Like I said, I have over 8 paid years of accounts. I just felt like I had done most of the content and will likely re-up when the expansion comes out. While I've enjoyed my time with CO, I do find that I limit my play times as I've already seen most of what it has to offer. CoH has maturity on it's side and it shows, but CO has some newer/cooler features. Bottom line is that if CO keeps a healthy pop, both games should benefit as the developers can't rest on their laurels.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
When all has been said and done, more will have been said than done.
Not if you're stuck in the European CoH Ghetto; pretty short of slots over here with only two english servers.
But pretty short on players too.
CoH is practically dead in the EU, they destroyed the EU community by rolling the forums into the US ones, but not the game servers; CO's single-world approach beats that hands down for me - and hey, much less lag too.
If CoH closed down the EU arm and merged the server list it, I'm betting it would get an awful lot of players back.
When all has been said and done, more will have been said than done.
DC universe is comming out this year I wqonder if it will take the best parts from both games and roll them into one,I hope so
Wow this is a genuinely misleading and poorly substantiated article; CO and CoH are indeed similar in (too) many ways but its the smaller details and design philosophy that make CoH a much more rounded and satisfying experience. If all you want to do is level an avatar for its own sake CO is the bomb...but for anyone who wants any degree of variety, immersion or involvement in their online experience CoH is lightyears ahead!
Combat
As someone eloquently put it 11221111<Block>221111222<Block>111 will get most everything done save the cheesiest of bosses, can you really call it action when the design of the system needs no real interaction? In truth this is not simply the combat system at fault but there is a total absence of variety in NPC AI 95% of the enemies attack with the same sequence and the same attack types (powers may look different...but look is all it amounts to). During the most recent free weekened I was comfortably able to level my character without missing a moment of the tv show QI...I guess its good if you want to play a game you dont have to look at mind.
Grouping
A bit of a toss up!!!!!! What are you talking about there is NO CONTEST, grouping or soloing in both games is possible but it is profoundly unrewarding on every level in CO, equally playstyle and tactics play no relevent part in CO gameplay whether grouped or not - yes you can alter your style but it is in no way nescessary, natural or even efficient to do so. Playing in a group in CoH is a very different experience to playing solo...its called variety...a important feature that CO doesn't have any of!
Missions
I grant its a closer battle here the instances of CoH are not very varied, heavily overused and repetitive. However you have two ways to complete most missions (go in all guns blazing or sneak and take out the boss) - in CO the few (very few) breaks from 'Do X of Y' task offer no such option. Similarly in CoH you are offered choices that effect who you will face and the storylines you will become involved in, different enemies have different stregths and weakeness so this actually provides a degree of variety in how the time passes. There is no room for style or choice in CO - no matter what your powers, no matter what your look, no matter what your ambition, your style, your level of aggression you are relentlessly driven on one path, less hero more super agent thug X...there is nothing whatsoever that makes the slightest difference. Add to this some very poor zone layout, mission locations and rapid respawns and the game conspires to ensure the evident futililty of every task you are given. I'd rate CO as not only worse than CoH but perhaps the worse Gameworld and Questing engine of ANY mmo still running.
Crafting and Economy.
Tedious timesumps in both games.... in terms of additonal features CoH has so much more its not even worth considering at this stage.
Character Creation
Yes there is more you can do with CO, but you do have to accept those cartoon style graphics which reflect a more irreverent and self conscious view of comic-dom. Its also odd just how many CoH character designs you cant get quite right. Its really improving something that was more than good enough imo. As for the power diversity, this would be a run away win for CO if it had any impact on world interaction or journey however powers are so superficial and irrelevent to the gameworld the feautre counts for nothing.
Content
CO is notable for bringing nothing new to the table, so the only relevent comment re content is how much much less there is.......imagine the absolute miminum volume of content you would think consider for a single play through and then half it.
CoH is in an entirely different league in terms of content volume and variety (although I concede the variety is still way too limited and not really on a level with most Fantasy mmos).
PvP
Well both games have big issues, the balance is appaling in CoH between certain classes, but there are competitive matches to be had with others..... the chances of a balanced contest in CO are almost nil and without villain play there is no thematic justification for pvp its just a joke, like most of CO's missions its an irrelevent game within an irrelevent game (though curiously fun on occasion).
Conclusion
Experience, knowledge, oppertunity were all presented to Cryptic with CO, its sad they did nothing with it, the principle differences between it and CoH, are down to the convicition in the theme - in CoH this makes the game experience more than the sum of its parts and time has ensured it provides a much more more rounded esprience, in CO content is arbitrary, inconsistent and often self destructive to fun or variety, it has one lone area of appeal - the character creator.
COH is a game designed to realise and occupy a superhero into a persistent world, CO is a sterile and basic engine to display an avatar.
Oh that is right they don't have a clearly defined respec system like City of Heroes/Villains. I tested CO and it was ok I won't come out and say it is the worst of the two games they both have things they can improve upon. I like the open word server idea of CO, but the lack of character slots kinda gets me and then there is the whole way to build your character up. I had a friend who was fairly new to MMO type games but not new to comics and he completely gimped his first 4 characters he made on CO.
"You think this "A" stands for France?" Captain America
I played CoH/CoV (aka CoX) for about 9 months with my son (age 8) and had a blast. (FluShots on the Freedom server). Mr-E, who posted earlier in this thread and others were great. I highly recommend joining them if you are currently playing that game.
I started playing CO just a little before open beta. Some how I got a closed beta invite. I've enjoyed every bit of the game and even carried over a CoH tradition by starting to hold costume contests in the CO Forums. The creator and graphics in CO are a thousand times better than CoH. So much so that this is a major reason I can not go back to CoH now which is sad since there are some really great people that I played CoH with.
CO does a great job of helping the solo player. You can create whatever type of character you want because of the vastly superior costume creator and classless power system. But, alas, this is the greatest weakness of CO. The thing I liked the best about CoH was teaming. Task Forces, Radio Missions, etc. I played as a healer and loved the fact that I could make or brake the team. You really dont find that in CO. Instead you get a lot of individuals who may group up for social reasons or a few team missions (like the end game lair, NemCon). Often they will be the equivalent of a scrapper who might have some buff/debuff powers but no one is a true support toon.
Things are changing in CO, though. I think that the developers have recently understood that we LIKE the holy trinity (Tank, DPS, Support) and want a reason for them in CO, too. Sure, we all like being able to solo but we want their to be a reason for us to build up powers to use as a tank, etc.
I've found that BOTH games are great. Some players don't mind the older more built up game of CoH. Others will find the freedom of a classless system, improved graphics to be more their style.
If you are at all interested in the CO, then send me an PM and I'll give you a referral code. You'll be able to try out the game for quite a while and I'll be happy to team up with you and show you around. Who knows, maybe you'll like the game after seeing for yourself.
Here's to a healthy, happy, mature, non-emo superhero MMO world,
Adogg
@Adogg in Champions Online.
I have played CoX since beta and was able to play in the CO beta as well and in my opinion, the only thing that CO has over CoX is the body and face mod capabilities of the character creator and a swinging travel power. CO's biggest downfall is the cel shaded look of the game. It's far too cartoony for my tastes.
>
Oh that is right they don't have a clearly defined respec system like City of Heroes/Villains.
Clearly defined? This just sounds like an issue with learning the system. When I played CoX, you would pick your new power and immediately be stuck with it. There was no such thing as trying out different powers before picking your new one. The only way to ever change your powers was to do an all at once respec, after grinding through a several hour long task force, and if you make a mistake at that time it is very inconvenient.
In CO we have the powerhouse, which is an instanced area where you can try new powers and respec them out immediately, with no penalties at all (once you take your new power outside the powerhouse, then it cost in-game resources to change the power, but at least you don't need to change all of your powers at once or grind to do so, and again the ability to preview powers is something CoX badly lacked).
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
First of all, the default number of characters is no longer 8, it is 12. Second, you are aware that in City of Heroes you can buy new character slots from the store and you get them as veteran rewards, right? For example, on my main server I have 14 character slots, and also a few unused ones that I can apply to any server from veteran rewards.
How did you get 22 character slots? You probably bought them from the C-Store.
Another non-issue.
Oh that is right they don't have a clearly defined respec system like City of Heroes/Villains.
Clearly defined? This just sounds like an issue with learning the system. When I played CoX, you would pick your new power and immediately be stuck with it. There was no such thing as trying out different powers before picking your new one. The only way to ever change your powers was to do an all at once respec, after grinding through a several hour long task force, and if you make a mistake at that time it is very inconvenient.
In CO we have the powerhouse, which is an instanced area where you can try new powers and respec them out immediately, with no penalties at all (once you take your new power outside the powerhouse, then it cost in-game resources to change the power, but at least you don't need to change all of your powers at once or grind to do so, and again the ability to preview powers is something CoX badly lacked).
Honestly I think now you are just trying to prove your point about CO being better at this and that than CoX. They both have features that are good and bad you have to agree with that.
On the powers thing I usually know by reading the description what a particular power does and if you know your AT in CoX then you pretty much know what you are getting as far as powers go. You can read the description for each power in each set in CoX.
"You think this "A" stands for France?" Captain America